Inside the SQL Server Clinic…

In my last post, I reviewed the Microsoft CSS involvement at the upcoming 2011 SQL Server PASS Summit. One big part as I’ve mentioned is the SQL Server Clinic. I thought you might find it interesting to learn more about exactly what the clinic is and how you can make the best use of it.

Starting on Wednesday, October 12th 2011 (which is the first day of the main conference), we will open up the doors of room 611 (I’m fairly confident we will use this room again) of the Seattle Convention Center. Our hours are “after keynote” each day (we want anyone working the clinic to have the chance to attend the keynote) until about 5-6pm. At any point in time, we could have up to 10-15 Microsoft SQL CAT and CSS engineers in the room waiting to answer your questions or troubleshoot your problems. There is no reservation required. Just show up and walk in.

When talking to our CSS engineers there are some things that you can bring that can help make your experience better. If you have a specific problem to solve, it helps to bring the details .ERRORLOG files, error messages, specific query syntax, or details of your environment. However, if you simply want to bring us your laptop with a remote desktop session back to your office, we will take that too. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve debugged a problem live on a customer’s laptop using remote desktop in the clinic.

Will we have all the answers? No. But most of the engineers in the clinic are willing to do to some research later for things we can’t answer quickly. This is no substitute for opening a case with Microsoft Technical Support. But in almost every situation I’ve seen in the clinic, we usually can provide some direction or tip that gets you closer to solving your issue..

If there is some issue or problem you have been having with SQL Server and you are struggling for an answer, given us a chance in the Clinic. We love the challenge of new problems we have not seen and also the satisfaction of helping someone face to face resolve a tough or difficult issue involving SQL Server.

We hope to see you at the upcoming PASS Summit.

Bob Ward
Microsoft