20 Years of SQLAuthority: Twenty Books, One Family, and a Diary That Grew Up

Today marks 20 years of SQLAuthority. On November 1, 2006, I saved one SQL query on a free blog so I wouldn’t lose it again. I had no plan beyond that.

It Started Because Excel Broke My Scripts

Like every DBA, I kept a folder of scripts I used again and again. Backups, index maintenance, the query that shows how tables connect. I stored them in Excel, and Excel kept breaking the formatting. So I tried a blog, the way you try a new notebook.

My first post was a query to display foreign key relationships. There was no introduction and no hello, only the query. The post was for me.

I named the blog after CFAuthority, a site I loved from my ColdFusion days. The name sounded bigger than I was. I was a developer with a folder of scripts and a habit of losing them.

My First Readers Were My Parents

When I started this blog, I was living outside India for work. My parents were with me then. My dad, Rajendra, and my mom, Renuka, followed this little blog more closely than I did.

They checked the visitor count like a cricket score. “Today five people came to your blog.” The next day it was three. Then nine. Every number got the same happy announcement.

To them it was simple and a little magical. “You write, and people read.” Nine readers felt like a full hall. Their joy was the first motivation this blog ever had, and some days it was the only one.

My dad is no longer with us. Rest in peace, Papa. This twentieth anniversary belongs to you too. Mom is with us, and I wish Mom the best of health. You two were counting my readers long before anyone else did.

A Stranger Found My Diary

One day an email arrived from someone I had never met. They liked my index maintenance script and wanted a small change. They had found it through Lycos.

That email changed how I saw the blog. My diary was public. Anyone in the world could read it, and one person already had.

That was the day SQLAuthority stopped being a notebook. Somebody out there was waiting for the next script, and I didn’t want to let them down. I still don’t.

Today there are almost 6,000 posts on this blog. At the 13th anniversary I counted 4,918. I’ve stopped being surprised by the number. I haven’t stopped being grateful for the people behind it.

Six Days Old, and Already in a Sentence

On September 1, 2009, Nupur and I became parents. Shaivi arrived at 7:03 in the morning, and our lives were rewritten in one breath.

We had shortlisted nearly 100 names. My mom, Renuka, found the one we chose, in our old scriptures.

Six days later I wrote about it on this blog, in between posts about SQL Server. In that post, Baby SQLAuthority, I added one sentence I hadn’t planned to write. It read: “I am sure that my daughter Shaivi will make me proud one day.”

I didn’t know then that a sentence can wait. That one waited for years.

The Youngest Speaker in the Room

On April 20, 2013, the Bangalore SQL user group held a Women in SQL day. More than a hundred people came. The organizers wanted a surprise for the end: the youngest SQL speaker anyone had seen.

Shaivi was three years and seven months old. We stood on that stage together, and Shaivi said a few words about SQL Server to a room of engineers. I wrote about it the next day in Youngest SQL Speaker.

I have spoken at conferences in fourteen countries. In one year alone I presented at eighteen international events. None of those stages felt like that one.

Nupur, and the Hours Behind Every Post

Almost 6,000 posts means almost 6,000 drafts that Nupur, my wife, read before you did. I was the one typing, but I did not bring this blog through twenty years by myself.

Nupur edits every single post I publish. She catches the typo I can no longer see and the sentence that made sense in my head but not on the page. When I think a post is finished, she gives it another careful read.

Her name is not in the byline, yet her work is in the version you read. Editing can be invisible when it is done well. The hours she gave this blog deserve to be seen. Nupur, thank you for every page you read, especially when I was ready to call it done.

The Twentieth Book Has Shaivi’s Name on It

Over these twenty years I wrote nineteen books. I know what it takes to finish one: the work at the desk and the patience of the people waiting beyond it.

Shaivi wanted to help our family reach twenty books for the twentieth year of SQLAuthority. She wrote Balance, Bounce & Believe: A Practical Guide for Young Gymnasts, drawing on her life as a gymnast. When I saw her name on the cover, I thought of the six-day-old baby I had introduced to you on this blog.

Nineteen books by me. The twentieth is hers. Twenty books in our family, in the twentieth year of this blog. I could have counted posts or readers today. This is the number that stopped me.

I wrote in 2009 that Shaivi would make me proud. She had done that long before she became an author. Still, opening a book she made felt different. For a moment, I was simply her reader.

Brent Ozar: Because You Are, I Am

There is a story from the Mahabharata I grew up with. Dronacharya was the greatest archery teacher of the age, and taught only the princes of the royal court. A young archer from the forest, Eklavya, came to learn and was turned away.

Eklavya went back into the forest and shaped an image of Drona out of clay. Every day, Eklavya practiced in front of that clay teacher, as if the real one were watching. Years later, Eklavya had become one of the finest archers alive, taught by a teacher who never knew.

I am Eklavya in this story, and Brent Ozar is my Drona. I learned from Brent’s posts and Office Hours for years, from far away, long before we met.

The story ends with Drona asking Eklavya for a right thumb as the teacher’s fee. Eklavya gave it without a word. Brent never asked me for anything. Brent only kept giving.

Some friendships show up in the comments long before they show up in life. Brent left a first comment here in 2008. It was a practical warning about msdb history growing too large.

On September 1, 2009, I posted that our baby had arrived. Brent was there that day too: “WOOHOO! Congratulations, sir!” In June this year, on Shaivi’s author post, Brent wrote again: “Congratulations to all of you!”

In between, Brent called me a friend in 2011 and a natural presenter in 2017. Brent cheered my anniversaries and wrote that Nupur and I put real effort into this work. In 2023 I was a surprise guest on Brent’s Office Hours. For years Brent has been my mentor in this field.

In Hindi we say “tu hai to main hoon.” Because you are, I am. Brent, this blog is here partly because you are. Thank you.

What 20 Years of SQLAuthority Taught Me

People ask me for the secret. There isn’t one. I wrote the next post, then the next one, on the easy days and the hard ones.

Consistency looks like discipline from the outside. From the inside it looks like people: the reader waiting for an answer, and the family making room for it.

I’ve made mistakes here too. Some of my old answers were wrong, and readers told me. This month I went back and corrected a few of my replies from 2007. Twenty years late is still better than never.

If you have a folder of scripts you keep losing, start a blog. Don’t wait until you feel ready. I wasn’t.

Thank You

To every reader who asked a question, left a comment or found a mistake: thank you. Twenty years ago this was one query saved in a hurry. You turned it into a place people come back to.

To Mom, and to Papa in loving memory: you counted my first readers when there were only five. Thank you for believing it mattered.

To Nupur, for reading every draft and giving this work your time again and again: thank you. To Shaivi, for making the twentieth book entirely your own: I am so proud of you.

Tomorrow there will be another post. There usually is.

Twenty years of SQLAuthority is not a count of posts, it is the people who made each one possible.

Published by Pinal Dave on SQLAuthority. More of my work at pinaldave.com.