The Author, Kalen Delaney

I have been working with SQL Server for over 20 years, starting with my employment with the Sybase Corporation in October 1987. The first chapter of the previous edition of Inside SQL Server 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 lab rooms. Those were the days... Although this history is not included with Inside SQL Server 2005, you can find Chapter 1 from Inside SQL Server 2000 here.

I did Technical Support for Sybase 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. I won Sybase's Instructor of the Year award in 1990. At the time I left Sybase, I had started development on an Advanced System Administration course.

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 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 13 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. Check it out at pinpub.com. I have written articles for Windows ITPro Magazine (formerly Windows 2000 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.