Erik Darling - Founder at Darling Data

Erik Darling

Founder at Darling Data

New York, New York, United States

Join Prog.AI to see contacts

Summary

🤩

Rockstar

Erik Darling is a founder and SQL Server performance specialist with seven years of hands-on experience tuning and troubleshooting high-impact databases from his New York base. He runs Darling Data, helping organizations fix slow SQL Server instances for a living, and previously consulted at Brent Ozar Unlimited where he sharpened his diagnostics and remediation skills. An active open-source contributor, Erik has extended and hardened the widely used First Responder Kit (notably sp_BlitzLock) and maintains tools in his DarlingData repo that automate pressure detection, partitioning, and real-world workload analysis. Known for pragmatic, script-driven solutions, he surfaces nonobvious deadlock and implicit-transaction issues by adding client and context-aware checks that improve root-cause clarity.

7 years of coding experience

Stackoverflow

Stats

626reputation

77kreached

1answer

4questions

Github Skills (16)

sql-server10

stored-procedures10

database-administration10

sql10

database-design10

tsql10

first-responder9

stater-kit9

responder9

responders9

starter-kit9

health-check8

powershell6

amazon-redshift6

windows6

Programming languages (8)

C#PowerShellShellPHPHTMLJupyter NotebookTSQLPython

Github contributions (5)

erikdarlingdata/DarlingData

Oct 2019 - Jan 2023

Open source SQL Server troubleshooting: sp_PressureDetector, sp_QuickieStore, sp_HumanEvents, and other SQL Server scripts for performance troubleshooting

Role in this project:

Database Engineer / Database Administrator

Contributions:16 releases, 4 reviews, 292 commits in 3 years 3 months

Contributions summary:Erik's contributions primarily revolve around creating and modifying SQL Server databases and related objects. The commits demonstrate the creation of a database named "StackOverflowCS," along with the creation of various tables, including "Badges," "Comments," "Posts," "PostTypes," "Users," and "Votes." Further, the user implemented partitioning on the tables, demonstrating an understanding of performance optimization. The commits also contain modifications to existing database objects.

sql-serverextended-eventsindexmicrosoft-sql-serverms-sqlserver

BrentOzarULTD/SQL-Server-First-Responder-Kit

Sep 2019 - Dec 2022

sp_Blitz, sp_BlitzCache, sp_BlitzFirst, sp_BlitzIndex, and other SQL Server scripts for health checks and performance tuning.

Role in this project:

Database Engineer / Database Administrator

Contributions:2 reviews, 52 commits, 81 PRs in 3 years 3 months

Contributions summary:Erik primarily focused on improving and extending the functionality of the `sp_BlitzLock` stored procedure, a key component of the SQL Server First Responder Kit. Their contributions involved adding checks for various deadlock scenarios, including those related to sleeping sessions and implicit transactions, to help with performance tuning. They also modified the code to include client connection information, and database context for detailed deadlock analysis. Furthermore, the user addressed bugs, fixed table-related issues, and improved code readability and formatting.

performance-tuningsql-serversp-blitzsp-blitzcachesp-blitzindex

Find and Hire Top DevelopersWe’ve analyzed the programming source code of over 60 million software developers on GitHub and scored them by 50,000 skills. Sign-up on Prog,AI to search for software developers.

Request Free Trial