Gail Shaw

sqlinthewild.co.za

Gail is a Database Specialist focusing on database performance tuning and database recovery, with a particular interest in topics such as indexing strategies, execution plans, and writing T-SQL code that performs well and scales gracefully. She is a Pluralsight author and has spoken at SQL Saturdays locally and internationally, SQL Bits and at the PASS Community Summit. She can often be found on the SQL Server community Slack, Gail has been responsible for extending the lifespan of many an application by performance-tuning their databases as well as providing technical guidance on all things SQL Server related.

Proposed Sessions for 2026

All about Indexes - Part 1

Indexes are essential to good database performance, but it can be hard to decide what indexes to create. In this session we'll look at guidelines for index creation

All about Indexes - Part 2

Indexes are essential to good database performance, but it can be hard to decide what indexes to create. In this session we'll look at guidelines for index creation

Identifying the worst performing queries in a DB, with Query Store

How do you identify the worst performing query in your database in five minutes or less? With Query Store

KQL for the SQL Professional

KQL look like SQL in some ways, and in others obviously isn't. We'll look at the similarities and differences and use our expertise in SQL to get familiar with this new query language quickly

On Transactions and Atomic Operations

Transactions are critical when multiple changes need to be made entirely or not at all, but it’s rare to see transactions used at all in most production code. In this introductory session, we'll look at what transactions are and how they're used

Parameter Sniffing vs Parameter Sensitive Plan Optimization

A look at what SQL Server 2022's Parameter Sensitive Plan Optimization is and what problems it fixes

Transaction Log Internals, unplugged

In this unscripted session we'll dig into transaction log internals, how SQL Server uses the logs and why things go wrong, all based on your questions

Previous Sessions

Regressions, neurons and decisions. Oh My!

Linear regression, neural networks and neural networks are three of the foundational algorithms in machine learning. In this session, we'll look at how they work and how they generate the results that they do.

All about Indexes

Indexes are essential to good database performance, but it can be hard to decide what indexes to create. In this session we'll look at the design considerations for clustered indexes and for nonclustered indexes.

All about Indexes

Indexes are essential to good database performance, but it can be hard to decide what indexes to create. In this session we'll look at guidelines for index creation

Do's and don'ts of database corruption

In this session we'll look at the things you should and shouldn't be doing now, to protect yourself and your data against the risk of corruption and thing you should and shouldn't do should the database ever become corrupt.

Bad Plan! Sit!

In this session we'll look at the common causes of bad execution plans and examine options for resolving the problem, short term and long term.