Have you set the bar high enough to ensure your success?

You’re reading Taking It To The Next Level, day 5 of 5 Days to Outstanding DBA Customer Service. What prompted this journey into exploring what is Outstanding Customer Service for the Data Professional?  Good Question.  You can find… Read more

In February I posted this post about the need for Volunteers for SUMMIT 2011.  I submitted my application to volunteer.  This past week I got word back concerning that application.  I am pretty happy that I have the opportunity once again to serve on a subcommittee for the upcoming SUMMIT. Read more

Wondering what to do when you get a break from work email today?

Make your opening move in a fun contest.

What’s to win?

The prize is tempting booty: Idera Software is giving away a free trip to SQLCruise Alaska. And not just part of the trip, it’s the full… Read more

A long, long time ago, in a state far away, I started writing about technology. At the time, in the late 90s, I was looking to share some of my knowledge, and hopefully advance my career along.

It was intimidating to think that I could produce articles anywhere near the… Read more

My name is Brian Kelley and I used to be a PC bigot. That was back in 1989. I was selected to attend the South Carolina Governor's School for Science and Mathematics and one of the things about attending there is everyone has a work service assignment. Mine was as… Read more

The Annoyance

Sometimes when we’re trying to track down a problem and looking through SQL’s Logs we have to dig through hundreds of backup successful events just to find what we’re looking for. Unfortunately, SSMS doesn’t have an exclusion filter when viewing the logs, so I can’t filter… Read more

Your customers expectations are their primary measure of your success. How well are you managing them?

You’re reading The DBAs Guide to Expectation Management, day 4 of 5 Days to Outstanding DBA Customer Service. What prompted this journey into exploring what is Outstanding Customer Service for the Data Professional?… Read more

Do you use NULLIF?  For me, this command has been seldom used.  Because of that, I have been dabbling with it a bit lately to make sure I have a better understanding of it.

What is it?

This is a function that compares two values.  If the two values are… Read more

A session I have wanted to see. Marciej Pilecki has done this before with high ratings and I have missed until today

He starts with a description of how memory is allocated in the 32 and 64 bit systems. One interesting thin he noted is that the lock Pages in… Read more

Brad presented a session that tries to help you identify and fix tempdb problems. Performance monitor is your friend. the local disks, avg read and write counters should help you determine if I/O is an issue. Watch for systems where you have >20ms for the averages, this is a gross… Read more

Random notes from Brian Kelley’s security talk. Brian spent a number of years working a a security guy for a bank in the Windows and infrastructure teams.

Networking, the UDP port is 1434. This is the listener and browser for SQL.

Default Tcp1433 is the default port for SQL. What… Read more

You know what’s crazy?

A comprehensive, technical, well thought-out, and ENJOYABLE document. One written with the occasional interesting diagram and a reasonable use of acronyms, with effective tables and practical advice. A document that’s written for a human being which has helpful links… Read more

Most folks I know hate meetings. They especially hate meetings about meetings. Recently I was working with a developer who loves to meet. He's a knowledgeable guy and he likes to talk and share technology. These meetings have often gone down various rabbit trails and they take up a lot… Read more

On Saturday, March 19th 2011 we held the first ever Saturday “code camp” style event for the IT Pro (Sys Admins) community which we called IT Camp. IT Camps are a free, one day learning event for anyone seeking professional development. This event serves IT professionals and students with a… Read more

For the 4th year SQL Saturday comes to Jacksonville, FL this year on April 30, 2011. Many of you already know about these events but just to remind you it is a totally FREE all day event that brings top speakers to you.

I hope everyone already realizes this, but… Read more

One of the most undervalued skills that an individual can possess is the ability to listen. Are you really hearing your customers?

You’re reading How To Really Listen, day 3 of 5 Days to Outstanding DBA Customer Service. What prompted this journey into exploring what is Outstanding Customer Service… Read more

I was very interested to hear Jonathan Kehayias’ session on extended events. I know this is one of the areas i need work and it is becoming a more important part of SQL Server with each version. Beginning with a good discussion of what extended events are and the terminology… Read more

I have known Brian for nearly as long as i have been running SQLServerCentral. He has been the guy that I called for security questions. He was a DBA, then became a security and auditing guy, and is now back to being a DBA. This talk is designed to better… Read more

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The first session of the day for me was Brent Ozars Blitz talk on how to quickly get information on a new server. I have seen Brent’s video on this and read some of his blog posts, but i wanted to see him go over the script in a session. Read more