As I’ve mentioned, a goal for the year has been to begin participating in technical forums, answering questions for other IT professionals and developers. I set up a few accounts/profiles last weekend and resolved to answer at least one thread over the course of the week. It was a busy week!

Well, last night Tim (blog, Twitter) and I left the SQLSaturday #25 afterparty some time between 7:30 and 8:00 p.m. We were having a great time, but the weariness from traveling and the lack of sleep was catching up with me.

We got back to the hotel, relaxed briefly, then broke out the laptops. Tim planned to download videos about the Tableau product suite, a very impressive "visual analysis and data visualization" tool that had been demonstrated during the conference, for the flight home. I planned to continue working on my SQLDiag presentation and hopefully compose a blog post or two as well.

Instead, we got caught up in discussion, visiting such varied topics as: SQLSaturday #25, SQLSaturday #17, the North Texas SQLSaturday (that is being planned), the NTSSUG leadership, presentation styles, career goals, marriage, books, friendships, our jobs, the folly of youth (specifically not applying ourselves in school), and our mutual admiration for Tim Mitchell (blog, Twitter). It was a lot of fun!

A little after 11:00 p.m. (I think), I suddenly remembered my forum-post-for-the-week-of-October-4th goal, which hadn’t been achieved. I decided not to let it slip, so I took action.

First, I needed to find a good thread to which I could contribute. I brought up the ServerFault, SQL Server Central, and TechNet forums in different browser windows and began searching. I wasn’t quite sure the best way to conduct the search, so I started by only including threads that hadn’t been answered yet. I skimmed through the remaining post titles and saw a few about deadlocks. I quickly latched onto that topic and refined my search. Moments later, I found my target: "how to analyse deadlock graph and deadlock xml ?" [sic].

One of the suggestions in my deadlocks presentation is to sanitize the deadlock graph and then reach out to the SQL Server community (by way of forum of newsgroup) or send the graph to a colleague for help (at least until attaining proficiency with deadlock troubleshooting), so this was a great fit.

I copied the deadlock graph’s XML content from the forum post into a text file and then changed the extension of the file from "txt" to "XDL." Doing so made it so that SQL Server Management Studio would automatically open the deadlock graph and render a diagram of the deadlock. I also reformatted the XML contents so that it was easier to read.

I figured out the reason for the deadlock (as much as one can without access to the system and/or schema) pretty quickly, but the write-up took quite a while. I wanted to include enough information and references that the poster would learn from the answer, and not just take it and be no better off in the future.

Unfortunately it was past midnight by the time that I posted the answer, which meant that I hadn’t technically met my goal of posting an answer during the week of October 4th. However, I have rationalized that I did reach my goal, as it was still before midnight in the Central Time Zone (in which the goal has been set). Cheap? Yes… but I’m still happy with it!

I plan to answer at least two forum questions this week.

Now for the punch line: The thread that I answered was posted on January 23rd*, so my effort probably has little-to-no value for Anjali Vishwakarma! I’ll chalk that up to being a forum newbie. Tim tells me that this behavior has its own, very fitting and humorous term on ServerFault/StackOverflow. Hopefully the answer will be useful to somebody else, in the future, when they are researching deadlocks.

* I noticed the dates in the deadlock graph, thought that it was strange that the poster needed help with a deadlock from so long ago, but failed to make the connection that I was dealing with a long-forgotten thread. Remember that I said I was sleep deprived.

• I created a profile for the MSDN and TechNet forums. I’m glad that they share a single profile
• I created one profile for ServerFault.com and another profile for StackOverflow.com. I even created a Gravatar to go along with them!
• I’ve had accounts for SQLServerCentral.com for several years, but only for accessing content. I will be filling out my profile tomorrow

I’ll start putting these accounts/profiles to use this coming week.