Guest Columnist: Grant Fritchey

What great historical figures would make great DBAs? A guest editorial from Grant Fritchey examines the traits and characteristics we look for in this role and which famous people we might choose and why.  Read more...

Should you buy or build a monitoring system for your SQL Server? Todays' guest editorial from Grant Fritchey talks about the resistance to recommendations that many people seem to have.  Read more...

Need a new laptop bag? MVP Grant Fritchey brings us a review of a large and versatile brief case that's a little different than the rest.  Read more...

Every day, out in the SQL Server forums, the same questions come up again and again: why is this query running slow? Why isn't my index getting used? In order to arrive at the answer you have to ask the same return question in each case: have you looked at the execution plan? Grant Fritchey provides the only dedicated and detailed book on this essential topic.   Read more...

With the GDR release, a whole new set of deployment functionality has become available to VSTS: DB.  Read more...

A description of the things to avoid and do when involved with a beta test.  Read more...

An overview of how to collect data from TSQL into Operations Manager Performance Rules.  Read more...

The trials and tribulations of our first attempt using Virtual Servers  Read more...

In order to support multiple environments, a number of choices, not readily apparent, need to be made. This article outlines one approach that is working.  Read more...

Longtime SQL Server DBA and author Grant Fritchey decided to quiz his developers on how to perform some simple functions in T-SQL. Read about his results and see how you might do in taking his quiz.   Read more...

Testing is an important part of any software development process, but it's a part that many of us skimp on or ignore because of the tedious nature of testing. Longtime author Grant Fritchey has been working with Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals and has written us an article on how you can make your unit testing easier.   Read more...

Testing is an important part of programming and it is no different with SQL Server development. Longtime author Grant Fritchey brings us a look at the new testing features available in Visual Studio 2005.   Read more...

One of the fundamental skills a developer needs is the ability to test their code. Most people don't really do a good job, partly because they don't have a good process and leave testing until the end. Grant Fritchey brings us a new method of unit testing T-SQL stored procedures that can help you build automated tests for your code.   Read more...

Working with outer joins can be tricky since the syntax doesn't always appear to make sense. Grant Fritchey brings us a great example of how this confusion can cause issues if you use the old style syntax.   Read more...

Having a good tool to read your SQL Server transaction log can be a lifesaver, or a job saver. RegGate Software, maker of a number of useful SQL Server utilities has a log reader and Grany Fritchey takes a look at this product and how it might work in your environment.   Read more...

This is one of the very useful features in SQL Server 2000 and if you ever have the need to perform this actiom, you will appreciate the knowledge in this article.   Read more...

SQL Server is an easy to use product in many ways, much better than the other major RDBMSs out there. However it's source control and ease of moving changes from development to production needs some work. Having a solid process is as important as good tools and new author Grant Fritchey brings us his proven method for moving changes through QA into production.   Read more...