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THWACK Monthly Mission - October 2017

When there is no more room in the database, the disruptors will walk the earth!

Your database is your sanctuary, and you must defend it against the disruptors. Your mission this month is to defeat each disruptor in your path. Along the way you will encounter Performance Hog, Blame Shifter, and Query Blocker.

SolarWinds

Database Performance Analyzer (DPA) has your back by monitoring all of your databases from SQL Server

to the cloud in one installation and gives second-by-second analysis. Time is key in any battle against database disruptors (or trick-or-treaters). We have you covered in the ongoing battle against poor database performance!

Good luck on your October Mission THWACKsters, and enjoy your Halloween candy!

OCTOBER MONTHLY MISSION

Use the mission’s resources to complete the tasks and answer the questions for a chance to win!

Correctly answer each question during the week and you'll be entered for a chance to win the weekly prize.

Correctly answer all 20 questions over the course of the month and you'll be entered for a chance to win the grand prize: A Xbox One X!

PRIZES

Weekly Prizes & Drawing Dates:

October 9: Nightmare on Elm Street Freddy Krueger Bread Toaster
October 16: Halloween Window Projector
October 23: Stranger things vinyl + Stranger things travel mug
October 30: Alfred Hitchcock Collection Blu-Ray

Grand Prize

October 30: Xbox One X

150 points are being awarded for each correctly answered question. There are 20 questions, which means you can earn a maximum of 3,000 points for this mission.

MISSION SHORTCUT

Complete the mission shortcut to earn an additional 1,000 THWACK

points & enter to win 1 of 10 sets of DBA Disruptors!

The shortcut is simple:

1. Download Database Performance Analyzer
2. Give us a view that represents your favorite disruptor (Performance Hog, Blame Shifter, or Query Blocker)
  - Performance Hog: He’s the process that just keeps consuming. Yeah, he’s that guy that will take the last chicken wing off your plate and say “you weren’t going to eat that were you?” This would be the SQL statement you see consistently popping up as the most impactful in the charts. Think of a select with numerous joins without a where clause (nothing to filter by).
  - Query Blocker: He’s the guy with the broken down 1984 lemon in your lane! Your stuck. You are going to be late for work. Look for the SQL transaction in your database that doesn’t commit or rollback – yeah, that’s the guy. He causes all kinds of blocking waits. He may even have rolled an external dependency into the transaction.
  - Blame Shifter: He’s subtle. He makes his appearance when applications slow down, but no one knows what the issue is. This when everyone starts pointing fingers! No one wins the blame game, except Blame Shifter. Is it the query itself? Is it the database configuration? Is it the data model? Is it the infrastructure? Where do you even begin?!
3. Submit a screenshot of your chosen view

MISSION RULES

A new question will open every day (Monday - Friday) starting on October 2, 2017. Once a question has opened, it will remain open until October 29, 2017 at 11:59 p.m. CDT. Check the schedule below for exact open/close times.

Weekly Prizes	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Winners
Week 1: Complete questions 1-5 by October 8 to be entered to win: Nightmare on Elm Street Freddy Krueger Bread Toaster
Week 2: Complete questions 6-10 by October 15 to be entered to win: Halloween Window Projector
Week 3: Complete questions 11-15 by October 22 to be entered to win: Stranger things vinyl + Stranger things travel mug
Week 4: Complete questions 16-20 by October 29 to be entered to win: Alfred Hitchcock Collection Blu-Ray
Correctly answer all 20 questions by October 29 and get entered to win the Grand Prize! Xbox One X - release date 11/7

Monthly Mission Terms and Conditions: US, UK, and Canada | Germany | Australia

Mission Shortcut Terms and Conditions: US, UK, and Canada | Germany | Australia

Find more posts tagged with

thwack_monthly_mission

Comments

rschroeder

dodo123

Was looking at the prizes but the second week link is going to the same prize as week one brett.holzhauer

silverbacksays

Great themed prizes this month, and that star prize...

Databases, specifically SQL, is something I'm digging in to more and more, so I'm looking forward to the informative hints, as I'll probably need them this month!

brett.holzhauer

dodo123

Chris - thanks for the alert! I have now checked on that and it seems to be working properly. Maybe wabbott changed it already, but thank you for letting us know of it!

pony10

Checking out the prizes myself and noticed Week Two Halloween Window Projector link says:

"Currently unavailable.

We don't know when or if this item will be back in stock."

brett.holzhauer

This is just a sample link, we have another vendor we are going to be sending it from.

Number0ne

I hope I can win 20 in a row :O

Radioteacher

Let the Comments begin!!!

pony10

Thanks brett.holzhauer, I was just making an observation to trigger the emails in case I didn't find anything else to comment on this month.

alex.west

That "Show more" is small and easy to miss for today's question.

notclarkkent

Really hoping I can go 20/20. That grand prize is nice!

brett.holzhauer

notclarkkent

Yes it is! Our team is pretty good at picking awesome prizes.

lbridger

The remix of the video shown in the picture you posted is amazing. I've probably watched it about 1000 times. SIXTY PHOAAARRRRRR

lbridger

Stranger Things on week 3 Counting down until the season 2 release on the 27th!

ecklerwr1

Whew so far so good!

rschroeder

Widely varying reviews on this week's prize:

dasher

Looks a lot cheesy!

stevenastem

Never look a gift novelty toaster in its Amazon reviews.

(Kidding, of course.)

Number0ne

There goes that xbox one x

vblincoe

Yay! I'm a winner!

Jfrazier

Loved the video !!

stevenastem

I miss the transcripts. Luckily this one was only a minute and the answer was visible rather than only audible. Meh, really would like to see the transcripts make a return.

brett.holzhauer

I was going to announce it but you beat me to it!

Congrats vblincoefor winning an awesome Freddy Krueger Toaster!

df112

great video.

jeremymayfield

Hey congrats to vblincoe on the win.

notclarkkent

Congrats vblincoe. If you decide to use it (and not hide it away for collectors sake) you will have to let us know how it works.

steve.wallis

Surely today's questions is wrong? It's clear the answer you should enter (given the topic), however, surely this doesn't provide the 'full picture for your application performance'?

dodo123

I had to look a few times and have a coffee before I did it but it does say a key ingredient suggesting theres more ingredient's

"a key ingredient to providing"

but yes you would be silly to not check the hint on this one

chris17amber

The video is not working

irishjd

So yesterday was a gov't holiday (3 day weekend!). So today I am trying to work on this weeks questions. I have tried the video link for Monday's question several times, but it never brings up the video that is mentioned in the question.