I have always liked information presented to me in lists. Lists are simple, straight-forward, and to the point. If you are like me, then you may want to check out two sources of top 10 lists on SQL Server.

The first one is from PASS, while offers top 10… Read more

Windows 7 just dropped off the network, acting like a cable had been unplugged. I rebooted the machine after trying a few things before finally rebooting the router and then using the Windows troubleshooter to reset my IP configuration.

Very strange and disturbing, especially as I was in the middle… Read more

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I just found out that I’ve been accepted to speak at SQLSaturday #32 – Tampa on January 23, 2010.  My session will be:

Why Should I Use Stored Procedures?

With the proliferation of ORM Tools like Linq To SQL, NHibernate, there has been a move to no longer use stored…

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You learn a lot when teaching someone else, whether that be writing articles or books or actually teaching a class. But, at least for me, I find I am spending so much time on these activities, that I am not growing myself enough in other areas. I realize that I… Read more

If you have been putting off ordering your copy of "SQL Server MVP Deep Dives", now is your chance to order the book at 50% off or $15 off. I am forwarding a message from the publisher:

This month, there are two more chances for readers to buy SQL Server Read more

I noticed a post recently from Bru Medishetty on Striped Backups. I commented, but thought I should explain a little more. There is a problem with striped backups in SQL Server.

They work great, they increase the speed at which you can perform a backup (possibly) and they can… Read more

I’m perusing things I’ve in the ‘blog about someday’ category of my list and found this one – a very nice PDF from Quest Software that has a ton of shortcuts for Management Studio. Free is good, and sometimes just finding the one shortcut can make the download and reading… Read more

Recently I tried to deploy a report to a Report Server on my laptop, which is running Windows 7 Ultimate. Unfortunately I received the following error:

The permissions granted to user ‘MachineName\SomeUser ‘ are insufficient for performing this operations.

This confused me a bit since my account was an administrator.… Read more

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I have read several articles about deploying SSIS packages.  Most focus on using the deployment wizard or simply copying the files and their dependent properties onto the server.  For companies with a small number of SSIS packages the later appears to be the method of choice.  Recently, I was asked… Read more

I realized that I haven’t written enough recently on this blog myself, being occupied with other projects for work. Recently I noticed that a friend, Andy Leonard, had written a few posts on blogging and I wanted to point them out. First he had Blog (Durnit!) , which got some… Read more

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This is a reprint of chapter 11 of my book, How to Become an Exceptional DBA, 2nd Edition, which is available as a free e-book here.

Physicians, attorneys, accountants, engineers, realtors, and many other professionals have written guidelines designed to discourage misconduct and illegal activity, and to promote the… Read more

I was reminded of this again recently during a class when the students exchanged cards and one student didn’t have them – the company didn’t provide them. Now yes, I think professionals should have cards and if your employer doesn’t provide them (and maybe even if they do), it’s a… Read more

Introduction

Properly managing VLFs can make or break the performance of your databases. There is a ton of information out there on the proper management of VLFs, but nothing I have found that tries to boil it down to the most important parts. So here it is, my attempt at… Read more

One thing that I think is very important for a successful DBA to be aware of is their hardware environment.  Database servers typically place more demands on their hardware resources than the more common web or application server, and if a database server is under pressure, it can cause lots… Read more

Microsoft's Bob Ward has updated his blog post about documenting SQL Server wait types, that came out of his work at PASS 2009. He is planning on updating his post further as he gets comments and questions on his blog.

You can query your SQL Server 2005/2008 instance to get…

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If you are a low-level, bare-metal type of SQL Server geek, you will probably enjoy watching this 60 minute webcast by Microsoft’s Madhan Arumugam and Fabricio Voznika. It has a lot of interesting and useful information on how Microsoft was able to scale up beyond 64 logical processors to 256… Read more

Microsoft has announced the release of CU7 for SQL Server 2005 SP3, which is Build 4273. The link to request the CU from Microsoft is not live yet, but should be pretty soon, hopefully.  I count 23 fixes included in this release.

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