Brad suggests some tips on how to maximize your professional development in 2010. Get a plan together now, and you'll make your life a lot easier.  Read more...

Would you like to have only SQL Server Authentication on your instances? That's the subject of this Friday's poll.  Read more...

Software licensing can be complex and confusing. Even in Windows and SQL Server, where hard limits are not enforced, people have problems determining how they should license software. Steve Jones talks about what vendors could do to help us.  Read more...

A guest editorial from Phil Factor looks at the Speed Phreak competition that has been taking place recently and is quite popular. Read about the inspiration for the competition and why you might want to participate.  Read more...

Why attend a conference? After the PASS Summit and SQL Connections, Steve Jones shares a few thoughts about the benefits of attending a conference for employees.  Read more...

It seems that many companies don't have the luxury of working with a variety of hardware configurations to test their architecture before deploying their applications. Some of the issues involve time and some involve tools. Steve Jones has an idea that could help with the latter today.  Read more...

Does a programmer need to know how his code gets executed? Arguably, developers should focus on database structures rather than a particular implementation, and Phil tries to convince us that good programming is not just knowing everything about your programming environment.  Read more...

This Friday Steve Jones has a poll for the programmers and hybrid DBAs out there. If you work with code, why do you use C#? Or why not?  Read more...

Virtualization is touted as a great way to save money, but it's a one time event. Once you've consolidated a server, you can't do it again. However consolidation isn't necessarily the same and Steve Jones tells us why.  Read more...

The decisions to install service packs and cumulative updates is often confusing to new DBAs. Many of them install every update, often without a good reason. Steve Jones asks why we might not have a better way to install updates, maybe even helping us decide if we need them.  Read more...

Testing our applications is important, but at what level do we need to test? Steve Jones talks about unit testing today, and wonders if this is prevalent for SQL Server developers.  Read more...

A litmus test is a way of determining your answer to a question based on a single issue or response. Steve Jones sees this as a bad idea, especially when looking to hire technical people.  Read more...

With the PASS Summit taking place last week in Seattle, Steve Jones found that there was a tremendous amount of SQL Server news and information on Twitter. It's a medium that is becoming useful for SQL DBAs.  Read more...

Steve Jones has attended the PASS Summit annually, and found value. But for this Friday's poll, did you find value this week? Or have you in the past? Let others know.  Read more...

Day 2 at the PASS Summit provides some inspiration for Steve Jones at the Women in Technology luncheon.  Read more...

Steve Jones talks a little about day one of the PASS Summit in 2009. A day of news, announcements, and briefings.  Read more...

Encryption is starting to become a necessity, not an option as we work with and store more sensitive data. A guest editorial from Andy Warren comments on our fears of implementing encrpytion and why we might want to just encrypt everything.  Read more...

One of the very common things that is needed in SQL Server is performing a restore of a database. It's also one of the most important things that needs to take place. So why isn't this a simpler process? Steve Jones wonders why we can't make this a simpler process.  Read more...

The next time you are tempted to hammer a performance problem with hardware, why not instead invest that time in hammering and refining your SQL queries? There are rich rewards to be had.  Read more...

A guest editorial for Halloween from Wayne West.  Read more...

During a "difficult period", a developer often sinks from view. When things are going well, suddenly they are the gunslinger, the hotshot. The DBA often looks on wistfully. For him, the "fame trajectory" seems to work in reverse.  Read more...

Continuing on with a "Week in the Clouds", today Steve Jones discusses some of the challenges of cloud computing.  Read more...

As the number of different software/technologies increases exponentially, does specializing limit an IT professional's ability to move around? This editorial is being republished due to technical issues from last week.  Read more...