About Kalen Delaney
I have been working with
SQL Server for over 25 years, starting with my employment with the Sybase
Corporation in October 1987. The first chapter of the first two Inside SQL
Server books that I worked on contained all kinds of juicy details about
the beginning of SQL Server with Sybase, and the author of the book's first
edition, Ron Soukup, was very much involved in
the original joint product. I was also there, in the other half of the
arena! I was working in Sybase Technical Support when the first OS/2 SQL
Server was set up in one of our labs. Those were the days... Although this
history chapter is not included with SQL Server 2008 Internals, you can
find Chapter 1 from Inside SQL Server 2000 here.
I worked for Sybase as a
Technical Support Analyst for two years, and then transferred to the
Education Department. I taught all the Sybase courses, and was the
specialist for the advanced course on Performance Tuning and Optimization.
In 1992 I became an
independent trainer and consultant, after my family moved from the San
Francisco Bay Area to the Beautiful Pacific Northwest. Since then, I have
worked with both the Microsoft and Sybase companies to develop courses and
to do internal training for their Technical Support staff. I was the
Primary Subject Matter Expert (SME) for two Microsoft courses: 608: New
Features of Microsoft SQL Server 6.5, and 665: SQL Server 6.5 Performance
Tuning and Optimization. In 1998 I developed an internal course for
Microsoft's product support team, to help them learn the internals and new
features of SQL Server 7 and I did something similar for SQL Server 2000. I
delivered these courses for many years, to various Microsoft offices and
partners around the country and around the world. Today, I have my own
custom course on SQL Server 2012/2008/2005
Architecture, Internals and Query Tuning, which I teach both
privately and publicly to clients around the world. You can see my schedule
here.
In 1993, Microsoft awarded me the
MVP (Most Valuable Professional) designation for my participation in the
public SQL Server help forums on Microsoft's news server
(msnews.microsoft.com). I am still regular participant on the public
forums, especially Microsoft's public news server, answering many questions
dealing with SQL Server internals and behavior.
I have been writing about
SQL Server for over 15 years, in addition to courseware development. Prior
to writing my first Inside SQL Server book I was a coauthor of SAMS' SQL
Server 6.5 Unleashed (Oct 96) and SQL Server in 21 Days (Feb 98), also from
SAMS.
I wrote a regular monthly column
on SQL Server Internals for Pinnacle Publishing's SQL Server Professional
Journal from October 95 to September 98. have
written articles for Windows ITPro Magazine
(formerly Windows Magazine), from Penton Media (windowsITPro.com) In
mid-1998 I joined the editorial staff of Penton's newest publication, SQL
Server Magazine, which made its debut in February 99. You can get a list of
all my articles for SQL Server Magazine here.
On numerous occasions I
have been invited by Microsoft to present special internal training. I have
spoken at Microsoft Technical Education Conference (TechEd),
and worked in the SQL Server Lab at several conferences.
In early 1999 I was asked to
participate in the original planning committee to form a non-profit,
international SQL Server Users' Group. Out of that planning committee, the Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) was
born. I served as the Director of Program Development for the first two
years, and spoke at the inaugural conference in Chicago in September 1999.
I have spoken at every PASS conference since that time, usually presenting
both a pre-conference seminar and a regular conference session.
My academic background
centers around UC Berkeley, where I earned a BA in
Linguistics and a MS in Computer Science. My training/teaching career goes
back to my graduate school days when I was a Teaching Assistant in the
Computer Science 101 courses at Berkeley. I started teaching classes on my
own during my last year of graduate school, and then I taught for four
years at Mills College in Oakland, California. At Mills, I taught the
entire range of undergraduate courses, except for compilers. I taught
Assembly language, data structures and operating systems, in addition to the
basic programming classes. I also developed and taught Mills' first course
in database management systems. I then left Mills to return to UC Berkeley
as a Lecturer, and I taught full time at Berkeley until I joined Sybase and
my life with SQL Server began.
