Heroes of SQL

Every story has heroes. Some heroes distinguish themselves by their superpowers; others by extraordinary bravery or compassion; some are simply heroes because of what they do in their jobs.

We picture the men and women who work in the emergency departments of hospitals, soldiers who go back into the line of fire to rescue their colleagues, and of course, those who have been bitten by radioactive spiders.

We don’t tend picture people who work with databases.

But let me explain something – at the PASS Summit next month, you will come across a large number of heroes. The people who are presenting show extraordinary bravery to stand up in front of a room full of people who want to learn and who will write some of the nastiest things about them in evaluation forms. The members of the SQL Server Product Group (who you can see at the SQL Clinic) from Microsoft have incredible information about how SQL Server works on the inside. And then you have people like Paul White, Jon Kehayias and Ted Krueger, who have obviously spent too much time around arachnids with short half-lives.

The amazing thing about the SQL Server community is their willingness to be heroes – not only by stepping up at conferences, but in helping people with their every day problems. It’s one thing to be a hero to help those in your workplace, by making sure that backups are performed, and that your databases are checked for corruption regularly, but people in the SQL Server community help people they don’t know on forums, they write blogs posts, and they attend (and organise) SQL Saturdays and other events so that they can sit and talk to strangers.

The PASS Summit is the biggest gathering of SQL professionals in the world each year. So come along and see why people in the SQL community are different.

They’re heroes.

@rob_farley 

PS: Thanks to another SQL Hero, Tracy McKibben (@realsqlguy), for his effort in hosting this month’s T-SQL Tuesday.