MS Word 2007 (and probably earlier versions) have the ability to do a basic document compare, useful if you're at a location that doesn't have more advanced comparison tools for TSQL. Just load your scripts into separate Word documents, click on the View ribbon, then click on View Side by… Read more

Well, I almost missed blogging for the entire month of June.  I'm sure that this fact didn't go unnoticed by both of the people who read my blog...  I'm working on a major data conversion and am in a mad dash to finish converting and validating years of healthcare and… Read more

Recently I had the chance to help a student debug a problem on a production server. It appeared to be failing because duplicate uniqueidentifiers were being created. Thinking that unlikely because the G in GUID stands for global, we dug in but found the code painfully hard to follow due… Read more

Recently I was visiting with an old acquaintance and one of the topics that came up was volunteers. At some point in the past I had said something about volunteers that subsequently proved true (hey, I am right sometimes!) and based on that, he was crowning me the know-all person… Read more

 I'm still on the fence here about a Kindle. I pinged someone that bought one and he said they're returning it. Not that they don't like it, but his wife reads too much now, so she's spending more $$ and they'd like to slow down. Also, he doesn't see enough… Read more

Call for speakers is open for SQLSaturday #5 in Olympia, WA on Oct 10 (note that the MS BI conference is in Seattle earlier that week if you're going you might consider staying over a day or two) and for SQLSaturday #6 in Cleveland on Aug 9th. First time events… Read more

 Apparently other people like One Note. Microsoft is using it for learning content, and I think that's a cool idea. I might find some issues with that over time, but at first glance I think it's a good idea. Read more

My friend Wes Dumey does a lot of work in the business intelligence sector as a contract employee and has a post worth reading called The Great Debate - Employee vs. Consulting. I don't agree with all of his points, but it's an interesting conversation to have. I do… Read more

Today is day one of the SSWUG SQL Server Virtual Conference II. This has been really fun so far. Our sessions were pre-recorded last month and each one is played three times.  The speakers are usually available during the sessions to answer questions by chatting.  After the conference the sessions… Read more

Had missed the announcement, came up in conversation yesterday with a friend, the BI conference will be Oct 6-8 in Seattle, registration is $995 if you register by Aug 8. Not planning to attend, so far I'm still firmly rooted on the conventional DBA side of things. Read more

Spent last Tues/Wed in Birmingham, speaking at the user group Tuesday night and then presenting a seminar on Wed. Attendance at the user group was good, about 18, and had really nice participation as I did my standard presentation on transactional replication. They've only been back in business since about… Read more

Lately I've been trying out a few new pieces of software to see how well they work. One is Twitter, and if you're really interested, you can follow me there. A few people do, though I'm not sure why. I follow a few people and might cut my list down… Read more

It's a couple weeks old, but there was a mild blog roar over some comments from Microsoft about wanting to be translucent rather than transparent. I think their reasoning is sound; no company should want or need to disclose the smallest detail about their business, their plans, internal arguments, or… Read more

Check out the SSWUG Virtual Conference next week. Here is a link with more information: http://www.vconferenceonline.com/sswug/demo.asp .  The first 200 people who use this code, VIPKK2008DIS, get a discount off the low $100 conference fee. Read more

Earlier in the week I posted a quick & positive note about the event, today I'll add some notes about things that could have gone better. Finding places for improvement doesn't detract all from the value delivered to attendees or the efforts of the volunteer speakers!

• We went with a…

Read more

I've been a little surprised lately by some of the questions I've seen in our forums at SQLServerCentral.com with questions that weren't questions. I've seen people post things that make it hard for people to help them. Among those items:

• statements, and never really ask a question.
• An error message…

Read more

Needed to kill a connection so I get could logged on recently to a server and didn't have the server tools loaded, ran across this useful link on How to Kill Terminal Services Connection. Might come in handy for you some day. It's hosted on HacksZine.com, similar to the MakeZine.com Read more

I saw a blog post by Robert Hensing talking about Microsoft's new GPS product and its very uncreative name. This is related to a conversation some co-workers and I were having today. We were trying to think of when Microsoft marketing had a really big success on the product front.… Read more

I participated in a lunch meeting recently with a number of people from MS that work on their community efforts, and I thought one of their questions was interesting, if obvious; what do you get out of participating in the community as a speaker or group leader?

I think it… Read more

One of the questions that came up during a panel discussion at SQLSaturday #4 was whether it was better to have one trigger or many. It's a Zen question, no real right answer as far as I'm concerned. In practice having 7 update triggers is probably not a good idea,… Read more