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Archives: July 2007

Midlands PASS Chapter - August 2, 2007

"Database Professional Toolkit" with Brian and Jeremy
Midlands PASS Chapter - August 2, 2007 Meeting
Sponsored by Red Gate Software

The Midlands PASS Chapter is pleased to announce our first member-led "Database Professional Toolkit" which features our own members demonstrating tools they use with SQL Server. These presentations aren't sales…

0 comments, 448 reads

Posted in K. Brian Kelley - Databases, Infrastructure, and Security on 31 July 2007

User Groups Moved to New Domain

We've just moved all the PASS chapters that were hosted on ~.ssc.com domains over to ~.sqlgroups.com. This is part of the final cleanup as we try to make sure we don't have anything left pointing at SSC. If you're the leader of one of these groups and are hosting elsewhere…

0 comments, 477 reads

Posted in SQLAndy on 27 July 2007

ApexSQL's Industry Experts program

If you're a Microsoft MVP, ApexSQL has brought back their industry experts program. You can find out more about it here: ApexSQL Industry Experts Program. In the past they've extended it to "SQL Server VIPs" which is how I was able to take advantage of it. But basically…

0 comments, 474 reads

Posted in K. Brian Kelley - Databases, Infrastructure, and Security on 25 July 2007

SQLSaturday in Orlando

I imagine many of you have seen or attended a Code Camp, a one day free mini conference type event that focuses on demo's and code. Brian & I have done SQL presentations at most of them in Fl and they vary from fair to great events, all depending on…

0 comments, 419 reads

Posted in SQLAndy on 23 July 2007

What is BI?

I actually started writing an article on this, but it's been sidetracked with travel and other stuff. However I do mean to get back to it at some point.

In the meantime, Jamie Thomson went ahead and wrote a nice entry on Business Intelligence, what is it and what is…

0 comments, 444 reads

Posted in The Voice of the DBA on 21 July 2007

A Graphical View of the Physical Allocation of a Database

First saw information about a tool called SQL Internals Viewer in a blog post here at Kalen Delaney's blog. The tool gives a graphical representation of how the data is physically allocated. It's currently in beta but has some nice functionality.

Here are the requirements:

Windows 2000 or higher

0 comments, 488 reads

Posted in K. Brian Kelley - Databases, Infrastructure, and Security on 20 July 2007

More Navigation

I've looked at the daily newsletter for a year now and I've wondered about the table of contents. It seems so small and plain that I've been wanting to change it, but I wasn't sure what made sense. Then earlier this week someone suggested reordering the "Users that need help"…

0 comments, 412 reads

Posted in The Voice of the DBA on 19 July 2007

Tampa Code Camp - Again

This turned out to be a nice event, better venue than last year. Well organized is always appreciated even at free events. Kudos to Keith & Keith at VisualGov for a first class job.

Brian, Chris, and I did our presentations on Sat and all went pretty well, we gave…

0 comments, 416 reads

Posted in SQLAndy on 18 July 2007

New version of SQL Server 2005 Best Practices Analyzer available

If you haven't seen the announcement, a new version of the SQL Server 2005 Best Practices Analyzer is available for download (dated July 2, 2007). The BPA will run on Windows XP, 2003, and Vista. It requires the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 as well as the SQL Server 2005 client…

0 comments, 447 reads

Posted in K. Brian Kelley - Databases, Infrastructure, and Security on 17 July 2007

The meaning of Database Administrator

In two blogs I follow, Andy Leonard's blog on SQLBlogs.com and Sheeri Kritzer's The MySQL She-BA, the question of what is a database administrator has come back up. Andy has posted twice on the topic, first with how DBAs are an enterprise requirement and then a follow-up to that…

3 comments, 473 reads

Posted in K. Brian Kelley - Databases, Infrastructure, and Security on 16 July 2007

QOD Day

Quite a few complaints on the QOD section from last week, mostly justified. A couple I had to defend, which is always tough. I have a fairly thick skin on the editorials, but for some reason the QODs tend to annoy me more and I get defensive. So I need…

0 comments, 480 reads

Posted in The Voice of the DBA on 16 July 2007

New MySQL Entry Level Certification

Last week I received an email indicating that MySQL had made available an entry level certification, the Certified MySQL Associate. The idea is to provide a certification which shows a person has some basic knowledge of MySQL, but not at the level of a developer or DBA. That's…

2 comments, 464 reads

Posted in K. Brian Kelley - Databases, Infrastructure, and Security on 16 July 2007

SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) Templates and Styles

Ever wanted to change the default template and style for the Reporting Services Wizard? Just think how much time this would save of repetitive work inserting images, formatting colors and text.

Well there are two files that maybe of interest to you; StyleTemplates.xml and Report.rdl. If you are familiar with… Read more

4 comments, 1,361 reads

Posted in Marc Beacom on 15 July 2007

Beta Testing

I'm not big on beta testing, or at least haven't been for a number of years because I can't afford the instability. VPC has helped and I actually loaded up SS2K8 to do some early looking awhile back, but for the most part I'm not into testing other people's unpolished…

0 comments, 413 reads

Posted in The Voice of the DBA on 13 July 2007

Working in solitude

If you've spent much time at all reading Steve Jones's blog posts and SSC editorials, you quickly glean that he finds working in solitude to be an interesting challenge. I'm sure that others could tell a similar story, but I had not experienced this for myself until recently. An upcoming…

0 comments, 440 reads

Posted in Tim Mitchell on 12 July 2007

Buy a $10 Raffle Ticket to Help Katie

Not a happy story, but if you've got a child I suspect it will be easy to decide to buy a raffle ticket to try to help out. My friend Steve Jones posted the raffle over at SSC. Brian, Steve, and I (End to End Training) are doing our…

0 comments, 407 reads

Posted in SQLAndy on 12 July 2007

The Business of Software

It's interesting being at a software company, especially one that's building on another platform. I've never done this before, having worked for companies outside technology building their own platforms and then JD Edwards, building software, but their own platform for companies to use. Red Gate, of which I sort of…

0 comments, 415 reads

Posted in The Voice of the DBA on 12 July 2007

Reminder: Midlands PASS Chapter Meeting Tomorrow Night

What: Midlands PASS Chapter July Meeting
Where: Training Concepts (250 Berryhill Road, Suite 502, Columbia, SC)
When: 6:15-8:00 PM

Speaker: SQL Server MVP Wayne Snyder
Topic: SQL Server Integration Services

Website: http://www.truthsolutions.com/midlandspass/

Technorati Tags: SQL Server | Microsoft SQL Server | SQL Server 2005 | SSIS | Wayne Snyder |… Read more

0 comments, 420 reads

Posted in K. Brian Kelley - Databases, Infrastructure, and Security on 11 July 2007

Upgrade or Wait

Lots of debate and disagreement on my recommendation to wait for SQL Server 2008 instead of upgrading to SQL Server 2005 now. What's funny is that I wrote the recommendation a few weeks ago and the day before I scheduled it to release, MS announced a Feb date for 2008.

0 comments, 435 reads

Posted in The Voice of the DBA on 11 July 2007

SQL Server 2008

Just when I was about to start a pool for the release date, Microsoft announced today it will release on Feb 27, 2008.

With only one CTP out there, and numerous changes I heard about at TechEd that haven't been included, they must be fairly close to getting this thing…

0 comments, 410 reads

Posted in The Voice of the DBA on 10 July 2007