Today Steve Jones notes that the explosion of cheap hardware and electronics might be good for data professionals.  Read more...

Part 3 of the AO and FCI integration series. This article gets SQL Server configured on the nodes and ready for work.  Read more...

A SQL Server MSDB database is flagged as "suspect"... what can you do? John Grover has some suggestions  Read more...

Distributed File Databases manage large amounts of unstructured or semi-structured data. Buck Woody shows how to install Hadoop in your Data Science lab to experiment with an example of the breed.  Read more...

Naming conventions are always tricky.  Read more...

There are times when retrieving data for complex business requirement requires you to temporarily store one or more results sets for a short period of time. Typically these temporary tables are stored in the scope of the current connection, but they may also need to be available across multiple connections.   Read more...

The DBA Team are back, ready to save another DBA. In this episode, a rogue DBA sabotages the backups, can Robyn Page, Steve Jones, Grant Fritchey, and Phil Factor find the solution? Save the backups...save the business.   Read more...

Every day, out in the various online forums devoted to SQL Server, and on Twitter, the same types of questions come up repeatedly: Why is this query running slowly? Why is SQL Server ignoring my index? Why does this query run quickly sometimes and slowly at others? My response is the same in each case: have you looked at the execution plan?  Read more...

Intersect with your favorite Microsoft experts in Orlando, Florida April 13-16, 2014 at this year’s most exciting tech conference: DEVintersection.com. Register with the discount code "RedSimple" for $50 off your registration.  Read more...

Today is the first day of general availability for SQL Server 2014.  Read more...

With the release of SQL Server 2014, the licensing options have changed slightly. Read on to discover how you might choose to change your licensing in the future.  Read more...

SQL Server 2014 is being released and a change in the defaults will ensure that more instances will run smoother.  Read more...

A new enhancement in SQL Server 2014 allows you to directly enter C# code in your stored procedures.  Read more...

Today Steve Jones notes that an advance in technology will help change the way he works.  Read more...

In the world of data it’s always been about speed. SSD’s have become very common on consumer machines and not unusual in corporate datacenters.   Read more...

Steve Jones talks about the women in technology, and other efforts to help minorities.  Read more...

When restoring a database to another server, you may get a master key error if using symmetric keys   Read more...

A relational database is a complex machine that is asked to deal with intricate problems. When things go wrong, it usually takes knowledge, deduction and a systematic approach to track down the root core of problems and to determine the best fix, Joshua Feierman illustrates how this can be done.  Read more...

Bringing together business analysts, data scientists, and business intelligence and IT pros, the PASS BA Conference will feature 65+ best-practices, how-to, and strategy sessions by top BA/BI experts. Keynoting this year is Information Is Beautiful author David McCandless.  Read more...

In which Phil ruminates on the ridiculous idea that we in the West suffer from an IT skills shortage. In truth we have a very blinkered idea of the sort of person who would succeed in an IT Development role   Read more...