Andy Warren (blog | twitter) recently blogged about wanting input on What Should PASS Be? and I think it's a reasonable question to ask. What he is basically saying is, "Okay, member of PASS (or potential member), what do you want PASS to be in the future? After… Read more

I got a report from development team that section of BizTalk communicating with SQL Server to update status
is frequently failing as deadlock victim.

As I couldn't see any useful details in errorlog, enabled trace flags 1204,1205, 3605 and -1 and captured
few deadlock cases in errorlog.

but there was… Read more

I delivered a webcast for the PASS DBA Virtual Chapter yesterday. It was called Tips & Tricks for Writing Better Queries. I really appreciated everyone who made the time to attend. I hope you found it to be time well spent.

As promised, here is a copy of the… Read more

I am not a lawyer. Let me say that again, I am not a lawyer.

Todays Dilbert has prompted me to post about my recent experience with SqlServer licensing.

I'm in the technical realm and rarely have much to do with purchasing and licensing.  I say “I need” , budget… Read more

Is your area of responsibility starved for resources? Is it difficult to get a raise? If so, don't despair. You're not alone - and there's something you can do about it.

Storytelling isn't necessarily the natural strong suit of technical people. That doesn't mean we can't do it - it… Read more

I've been on both sides of the debate with respect to whether or not to install antivirus software on a server running Microsoft SQL Server. If you decide to go down that route (or you are required to go down that road), here's the guidance you need to read:

Microsoft… Read more

Overview

Today was mostly about Table Design, Partitioning, with a little of Indexing. Partitioning is a big, complex topics with a lot of intricate details and interactions. If you are thinking about implementing partitioning using either partitioned tables or partitioned views, do your homework. Don’t just implement either without knowing… Read more

I bet by now you've heard of SQLRally, be it from the blogosphere, Twitter, the PASS Connector bi-weekly emails, word of mouth at SQLSaturday or a user group meeting, or one of the other umpteen places that it's been mentioned. Until now our marketing efforts have been focused around… Read more

I was referred to someone on twitter today who wants to email query results without setting up database mail.  I explained this in Post 6 of PowerShell Week at SQL University but that example was somewhat complicated. Instead, I thought I’d whip up a new example using Paul’s latest survey Read more

A Thousand Men Marching Still Only March As Fast As One Man.

la·ten·cy - Computers . the time required to locate the first bit or character in a storage location, expressed as access timeminus word time.

Often when talking to people about performance they get rapped around the MB/Sec number… Read more

At least not completely. There are some functions in SQL Server that are built on the SQL CLR, and even if you have disabled the CLR for user written code, it still loads app domains and functions for system code.

An example of this is the spatial data type. It’s… Read more

If you’ve attended any of my public sessions about SQL Server technology, then you might remember that I extend a standing offer to provide a free, long-term license to any of several products from Quest Software, such as Toad for SQL… Read more

Alright, I’m not famous, even though I share the name of a famous Jazz pianist. So, obviously I am NOT talking about that kind of agent. I’m actually referring to the distribution agent for transactional replication.

If you have worked with replication for any amount of time you will… Read more

About a year ago, I started playing around with CLR and my desire to disable xp_cmdshell for my clients.  As a result, I had created the CodePlex project FileSystemHelper.  I blogged about it back then and had meant to get back to it with a number of updates but… Read more

Microsoft has released two new Cumulative Updates for SQL Server 2005. The first one is SQL Server 2005 SP3 CU14, which is Build 9.00.4317. The second one is SQL Server 2005 SP4 CU2, which is Build 9.00.5259. There are only two fixes for SP3 and nine fixes for… Read more

 Over on the ERC forums, Bill Graziano (blog | twitter) has posted the proposed NomCom selection process. We would really like your feedback on it. Some highlights:

• PASS membership (outside of the BoD) make up the majority of voting members.
• You cannot be on the NomCom if…

Read more

Overview

Day two of the SQLskills Immersion Event is over and I have listed the interesting parts below. The food, again, was great, except for the lack of danishes during breakfast (I really like those). Today I got see Kimberly’s teaching style. She’s a fast talker, so you better keep… Read more

Paul Randal (b | t) posted a survey how is your tempdb configured? Since I just happen to be at a SQLskills event this week I went ahead and created a PowerShell script to get the info across all your servers.

You’ll need a list of servers in… Read more

For the month of February, I conducted the S3OLV meeting virtually from the confines of home in Utah.  As you may know, I have moved from Vegas back to Utah.  Despite having moved away from Vegas, I am still helping with the User Group in any way that I can.… Read more

As an old school DBA and always having cheap frugal employers, I have rolled my own management and monitoring solutions. I’ve shared bits and pieces of it over the years to colleagues and to the community but never the whole thing at one go. I did try and build a… Read more