The book is actually Big Brown: The Untold Story of UPS and it was written by a retired UPSer that spent his whole career there. I picked up this book after being on the Underground Tour in Seattle. As an aside that was neat, but the guide mentioned UPS was… Read more

  I have been admonished in the past for the use of this code which makes as many substitutions as you like in a string. However, It has worked on every version of SQL Server I've ever tried it on. I've been using it for years. It has an extraordinary… Read more

Another story from a previous job. I joined the company in August, in October they started prepping for Halloween - it was a really big deal at that time (1998) and each department fought hard to be the winner of the overall decorating contest. I reluctantly joined the planning team… Read more

Right now it looks like I'll be putting a training session on for my local ISACA chapter on SQL Server security and auditing SQL Server.  I know there is usually a lot of griping by DBAs when auditors show up and ask about their databases. Typically it's around how the auditors… Read more

This question comes up a lot: how do I give read-only access to job status to a group of people? The answer, at least in SQL Server 2005 and 2008, seems simple: add them to the SQLAgentReaderRole role. But this doesn't actually work, as this role also has the ability… Read more

I saw Paul Kenny of Ocean Learning speak about sales least year at the Business of Software Conference. I thought he was great and so when we were talking about how we should present our case for changes in my group to management, I thought of Paul. I was going… Read more

We had our first oPASS meeting of the year last week with about 18 attending. Jonathan Kehayias was our featured speaker, doing a a nice presentation on common performance issues. Always a topic of interest, and we had lots of good questions during the presentation. I also spent about half… Read more

I recently had the opportunity to play the T-SQL Alphabet Game, which was introduced to me by SQL Server MVP, Rodney Landrum, the author of Pro SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services.

While I am not much of a game player myself, I can see how it can be a… Read more

After a lot of delays, my book on how to use SQL Server Profiler has been published by Simple-Talk Publishing, and it can be downloaded free here. A little later, this book will be available for purchase as a paperback book from Amazon.com.

The 283 page book is titled… Read more

The video I did for Jumpstart TV on xp_cmdshell execution has hit the front page. Registration on the site is required but viewing the video (~ 5 minutes) is free.

  Read more

Continuing the conversation I began in Part 1 & Part 2, today I want to ruminate some more on networking. I've had a good discussions about networking since I wrote the first two parts, with a focus on the value of networking. Quite a few people had stories about… Read more

This is a little old (five days based on the last update), but TrendMicro put on their blog about fake LinkedIn profiles which have links leading to malware.

The basics:

• The fake profiles are for famous people others would likely be looking for (like Paris Hilton, Beyonce, etc.)
• The…

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Hopefully by now everyone has seen this, but if not, here's a reminder to continue to spread the details. Denis Gobo made a post earlier today and Security MVP Randy Franklin Smith sent out a newsletter after being prompted by his MVP lead.

The worm is known as Conficker or Downadup… Read more

A while back I mentioned that Radio Shack had an interesting promotion on a netbook and debated at what price I'd find such a device buyable, and I also recently mentioned seeing the Alphasmart Neo. My friend Diego dropped me a note that a cheaper alternative to the Neo is… Read more

I’ve been running every day, over 100 days in a row now, and one of the things that has helped me on this journey is the TV that I’ve placed in front of the treadmill. As I started running, I put on some of our older DVDs, watching 15-20 minutes… Read more

I got the opportunity to participate in the We Are Microsoft Charity Challenge (under the umbrella of GiveCamp) in Dallas this past weekend.  As I wrote in a previous post, this event matches charities in need of technical assistance with coders and other tech geeks willing to give up… Read more

In the last 4 months of having the Kindle, I’ve gone through a few different ways of reading on it and it’s been interesting to me to learn a few things. I’ve experimented a bit and wanted to share some of the changes that the Kindle has made in my… Read more

Lately I've been thinking (again) about books and book reviews, mostly because I'm looking to see if it makes sense for PASS to continue doing them. I hope you'll drop me a comment or two at the end.

I think Amazon has a pretty good system of reviews in that… Read more

I didn't want to go on this trip, but I agreed to do it. Now I regret it.

My flight to Chicago was fairly uneventful, but it was running late. At 4:30CST the pilot says we should be on the ground in 30 minutes, which is good since I have… Read more

(1linerForward) I originally wrote this in French while working at LaCaisse.com - http://dbhive.blogspot.com/2008/07/fichiers-journaux-de-transactions.html   

Why do you care, as a DBA, or a Developer for that matter, about what is happening in the Transaction Log? Lets rollback a little and see... The raison d’être of a transaction log file is to… Read more