Sometimes its the little things that seem to take forever! We've had a text only logo up for a while, functional if less than exciting. Getting a logo done was hard because while all of us know a lot about data, none of us seem to have the logo designer… Read more

Picked this up from the local Net group here in Orlando. INETA is actually pretty helpful when it comes to SQL groups. This is definitely a specialized role and not one I'm sure I agree with, but it's hard to argue against their success at least with regards to their… Read more

Some time ago I was looking for a password vault and came across some recommendations for KeePass. KeePass is open source and free. It's a nice password manager and some of the features I like are:

• Strong encryption of the password database
• The ability to use a password, key…

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If exists is a well known way to improve performance because it returns as soon as it matches a single row - at that point it knows the condition is true and there is no need to continue.During a recent www.opass.org meeting guest speaker Bill Graziano mentioned that he uses…

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SQL Server 2005 introduces Common Table Expressions (CTEs), which are great for recursive queries. Previously, in order to do recursion, we'd have to resort to a temporary table or a like type of structure. Therefore, if we have hierarchical lookups, CTEs are a great construct to use to navigate…

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After a few meetings of oPASS this year the numbers I use are 2 slices of pizza and 2 drinks per person, plus about 10%. I order the large pizzas and get a mix of crusts and topping - remember to get vegetarian! In our case we also have one… Read more

A recent thread on SQLServerCentral.com had an individual what it took to be a successful DBA. Couple that with a RunAs Radio podcast with SQL Server MVP Brad McGehee on Being a Better DBA and that raises the question, "What does it take to become a DBA?"

I came at…

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For a variety reasons, including personal/family concerns and workload, I've not been able to write as often as I'd like. That doesn't just include the blog, but also writing articles. It's been a long while since I've written an article for SSC. I want to get back to writing…

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This went up today and there is one great comment about possibly using snapshot isolation as an alternative to the techiques I described. It's the best part of SSC; reading the article plus the comments really gives you an interesting view of the subject at hand.

The article is at… Read more

I've been following Steve's exploits trying to learn the podcasting business and we usually talk about it once a week or so, just me as a sounding board/podcast skeptic. We were talking yesterday about the podcasts and I had mentioned something about making a note for my blog, and he… Read more

If you subscribe to the Connector (the main communication email from PASS.org) you should have gotten one yesterday that finally linked to the event! Looks like we finally sorted out the lines of communication and every bit of press helps.

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Noted SQL Server security expert, Chip Andrews, has released an alpha version of a command-line version of SQLPing3. You can find it at his free tools location on SQLSecurity.com:

SQLSecurity.com Free Tools

If you aren't familiar with the SQLPing series, these tools are used to detect SQL Servers in…

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If you do any coding in .Net using aspx pages you'll recognize this one. Each page has a title attribute that defaults to 'untitled page'. Nothing wrong with a default, but I sure wish they wouldn't let those pages compile or would at least flag a warning. All too often… Read more

I'm tech editing a book, working late as usual, football game on and kids in bed. As I was going through the book, there was a quick sentence:

Be Pithy.

I gathered the meaning from the context, but decided I should look it up. Despite being a writer, I don't…

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Had a friend call me recently to ask about how to do this, had an nvarchar(2000) column that needed to be unique values. If you've ever tried this you'll know that SQL will let you do - with a warning! All works fine if your column initially has less than… Read more

If exists is a well known way to improve performance because it returns as soon as it matches a single row - at that point it knows the condition is true and there is no need to continue.During a recent www.opass.org meeting guest speaker Bill Graziano mentioned that he uses…

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We're at 215 registered with 3 weeks to the big day! This week I'll be having the last planning meeting with our facility host and finalizing the food plans (anyone know how much coffee we need for 200+ attendees?). PASS will be giving us a nice mention in their next… Read more

The most recent ACM Queue Magazine (Vol 5 #6, Sep/Oct 2007) had two really interesting articles. The first was about the ZFS file system and was framed as an interview it with the two inventors, both from Sun. I'd seen it mentioned a few times via blog and took the… Read more

I wrote this article shortly after returning from the PASS 2007 Summit and tried hard to come up with ideas to address what I see as shortcomings within PASS. PASS runs a great conference, but in other areas they just haven't achieved the kind of success that I know is… Read more

Here's a good article on setting up Deadlock Notifications in SQL Server 2005 written by Patrick LeBlanc.

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