That's the question posed by Kalen Delaney in a write up on SQLMag.com. Is a SQL event of more than 2k or 3k attendees too big? Is there a point where it is too big?

First, I'd say that I'm a big fan of local and regional events. They present… Read more

In the past few years, many people - myself included - have expressed a desire to see the quality of the Microsoft certification program improved.  Even though there have been some positive changes in the MCP program during the past few years, it still lacks the repute (and frankly, market… Read more

I have given a talk about new data types and T-SQL features to three local groups.  I am presenting it again at the St. Louis Day of .Net on December 13th (http://stlouisdayofdotnet.com/).  Since Itzik Ben-Gan was giving a similar talk at PASS last week, I decided to attend… Read more

database administration scalability

I am working on a project that is very successful in terms of its market share, i.e. product users are probably doubled in the last two years, and it is forcasted to be trippled next year, and as a result, our production servers are doubled already, and may be…

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One more holiday post. Hope you all enjoyed Thanksgiving and are now enjoying either a quiet and well deserved day at home, or a day of holiday shopping and spending to boost our economy.

Now on to the main item! I've seen it on TV a few times, but never… Read more

Working with healthcare organizations, I am constantly aware of the restrictions my staff and I must abide by according to HIPAA constraints.  It’s not really rocket science; as far as data security goes, HIPAA mandates what logically should already be in place.  Any organization that takes data security seriously will already have… Read more

I'm cheerfully taking the day off today (and tomorrow too!), and I'm writing this a week in advance as I wait on the final keynote at PASS 2008 to start. Was debating whether to write something for Thanksgiving, and thought I'd just browse a little to see what I could… Read more

Before you get much further, please do not use this for every case where you have issues with duplicate rows. In most cases, the issue is in the source query and should be resolved there.

However, if you've encountered issues like I just did, this lazy DBA's approach might prevent…

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Second try. The video didn’t embed in the previous post. Nor this one. Here's the link

Microsoft Surface Demo

 

 

This is from the BI Conference in 2008 that took place in October. It’s an interesting use of Surface technology, but is it that useful? Is Surface that much… Read more

This is interesting. I’m not sold on Surface, though I did play with one last week in Seattle.

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One of those old sayings that has a grain or two of truth to it. Stocks, real estate, education even, all require some money in to have a chance at making money later unless you the Trumpster maybe. I was thinking about this on election day when Starbucks was offering… Read more

I saw this post about a recent panel that tried to come up with guidelines for airlines as far as how long they could hold travelers hostage on a plane if delayed between the time they load the plane and take off. I've been a victim of this twice; one… Read more

My goal of 400 posts a month has been in jeopardy with all the traveling I've been doing over the last two months. I was down to 309 this weekend (rolling 30 days) and get worried.

So I've been making an effort over the last 3 days and I'm back… Read more

Saw a post from Michael Miller that PC Magazine will end it's print version with the January issue. Have to agree with him that it's sad to see it go, for a long time it's been one of the tools I've used to keep up with what's going on with… Read more

I heard during last week that the 2009 PASS Community Summit will be back in Seattle, on Nov 3-6 next year. I think that's great and if you have plans to go, or are planning to go, or get get budget approved now and register at a discount, be sure… Read more

It's fun to read good work, and my friend Kendal Van Dyke recently posted How CommitBatchSize And CommitBatchThreshold Affect Replication. He was looking for the answer to how/when to alter the values of those two settings and BOL just didn't make it clear, so after the standard bit of… Read more

Turning up the heat.  Take it up a notch.  Stepping up to the plate.  Less talk, more action.

However you choose to describe it, I’m upping the ante on my participation in the SQL Server community.  As I wrote in my previous post, I had allowed myself to get so… Read more

After 2 years working on a data conversion and software implementation project, I’ve finally started to get caught up on a few things.  The past 5-6 months have been particularly intense, and during our go-live weekend I spent something like 50 hours straight at my office.  Now that it’s behind… Read more

So now that PASS is over and life is getting back to normal I thought it would share my final thoughts and evaluations of the event.  This was my first year at PASS so I don’t have much to compare it to other than SQL Saturday, which isn’t a fair… Read more

I definitely need to write up a few summaries about last week, but right now I'm a bit buried with things.

I really enjoyed the Summit and it's become an annual event for me. Other than the 2000-2001 time frame with a new baby and changing jobs, I've attended the… Read more