About the Author

Kalen Delaney is one of the founders of Solid Quality Learning and has been working with SQL Server for 19 years, starting with employment with the Sybase Corporation in October 1987.

After teaching Computer Science at UC Berkeley and Mills College in Oakland, California, Kalen joined Sybase and worked with their Technical Support Group for two years, and then transferred to the Education Department where she taught all the Sybase courses and was the specialist for the advanced course on Performance Tuning and Optimization.

In 1992, Kalen became an independent trainer and consultant, after moving with her family from the San Francisco Bay Area to the beautiful Pacific Northwest. Over the next few years, she worked with both the Microsoft and Sybase corporations to develop courses and to pro vide internal training for their technical support staff. In 1998, Kalen developed an internal course for Microsoft's product support team to help them learn the internals and new features of SQL Server 7, and she helped develop a similar course for SQL Server 2000. Kalen delivered these courses for many years to various Microsoft offices and partners around the country and around the world. Today, she offers her own custom course on SQL Server 2005 Architecture, Internals and Query Tuning, which you can find out about on the Solid Quality Learning Web Site: www.SolidQualityLearning.com.

In 1995, Microsoft awarded Kalen the MVP (Most Valuable Professional) designation for her participation in the public SQL Server help forums on Microsoft's news server (msnews.microsoft.com). She is still a regular participant on the public forums, answering many questions dealing with SQL Server internals and behavior.

Kalen has been writing about SQL Server for over ten years, in addition to courseware development. She wrote a regular monthly column on SQL Server Internals for Pinnacle Publishing's SQL Server Professional Journal from October 1995 to September 1998 and has been writing a monthly column for SQL Server Magazine since the very first issue. She has also written articles for Windows IT Pro Magazine (formerly Windows 2000 Magazine) and MSDN Magazine.

Kalen has spoken at Microsoft Technical Education Conference (TechEd) on many occasions, and has spoken at several internal Microsoft conferences around the world. In early 1999 she 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. She served as the Director of Program Development for the first two years and spoke at the inaugural conference in Chicago in September 1999. She has spoken at every PASS conference since that time.

In 2002, Kalen and five colleagues started their own company, focusing on offering the most advanced SQL Server training in the world. Over the next four years, that company, Solid Quality Learning, has grown to include more than 40 SQL Server experts from around the world.