Let’s say that you are in the market to buy a new laptop or ultra book to replace that old clunker that you have been suffering with. You want to be able to check out a number of different brands and models, hands on, and you want to see some… Read more

Is SELECT Identity() … INTO Minimally Logged in Simple Recovery?

I was having a discussion with Idera (@idera_software) dev lead Vicky Harp (blog|@vickyharp) about minimizing log impact when performing schema changes on really large tables. One option discussed was using SELECT INTO Read more

In my previous post here, I’ve discussed how we can detect fragmentation in SQL Server databases indexes using dynamic management view function sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats. In this post, I’m sharing my stored procedure which I’ve created a while ago to rebuild fragmented indexes based on the fragmentation level. This stored procedure… Read more

1. Using the OVER clause with aggregate functions
The following sample is from BOL:
-------------------------------------
USE AdventureWorks2008R2;
GO
SELECT SalesOrderID, ProductID, OrderQty
    ,SUM(OrderQty) OVER(PARTITION BY SalesOrderID) AS 'Total'
    ,AVG(OrderQty) OVER(PARTITION BY SalesOrderID) AS 'Avg'
    ,COUNT(OrderQty) OVER(PARTITION BY SalesOrderID) AS 'Count'
    ,MIN(OrderQty) OVER(PARTITION BY SalesOrderID) AS 'Min'

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I have two goals that I have sought to achieve by mid-year of 2012. The deadline I set for myself is up. Goals achieved: Zero, Zip, Nada, Zilch.

Null. Or is that " "?

Earlier this year I set two goals: 1. Learn Ruby on Rails 2. Obtain a… Read more

You have until July 6 to enter to win a free seat at the SQLskills Internals and Performance (IE1) training class in Bellevue, WA on August 6 – 10, 2012, sponsored by SQLSentry.  This is really a great chance to get some excellent training from the best instructors in… Read more

Quite often people need to write a new T-SQL application to replace an existing one for various reasons. For instance, Existing report is generated by a complex T-SQL procedure which pulls data from OLTP directly. The performance of the procedre is poor since everything is calculated while report is running.… Read more

Recently while working for a client that was running SQL Server 2008 R2 I was tasked with loading an Excel Macro (.xlsm) enabled workbook. If you have ever tried this yourself you may have tried using the default Excel provider, which does not work. In fact, this is the error… Read more

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working with SMO to implement some maintenance routines across my clients. Because of the nature of most of my clients, Powershell is almost always the answer. I have been trying to simplify the coding of some of these scripts by using Add-Member.
I…

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Troubleshooting Database Mirroring Error 1418 Updated

Last night I was helping someone with a database mirroring setup problem via email. It has been a long time since I came across a new cause for the infamous 1418 error for database mirroring. This time the error was accompanied by an error… Read more

Hello Dear Reader today I'm going to be presenting on SQL 2000 Upgrade tips and tricks for Pragmatic Works Training on the T's.  The slide deck and Demo's are live on the Resource Page so please head over there to grab them and let me know what you thought!

Thanks,

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Four more speakers we’re pleased to have joining us at SQLSaturday #151 this fall in Orlando!

Paul Waters

Mike Antonovich

David Liebman

Bradley Schacht

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This week I have two presentations on my schedule. I get to give my Performance Tuning for Pirates presentation twice this week.

Pittsburgh SQL User Group Recap

On Tuesday, I presented my Performance Tuning for Pirates presentation at the Pittsburgh SQL Server User Group. Actually, I had a little tweak… Read more

Today we’re starting to announce speakers that will have at least one session on the schedule for SQLSaturday #151 in Orlando on September 15, 2012. We’re announcing before we have the final schedule posted so that speakers can make travel plans and to drum up some excitement!

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In my Encryption Primer talk, I do demo on symmetric key use, and wanted to document it here. Encryption is a serious subject, and please do your research and education, as well as testing, before you implement it.

This post will look at some simple encryption and decryption using symmetric… Read more

SQL Server Data Quality Services (DQS) is a knowledge-driven data quality product that is new to SQL Server 2012.  The technology was from Microsoft’s acquisition of Zoomix in 2008.  DQS enables you to build a knowledge base and use it to perform a variety of critical data quality tasks, including… Read more

Just a reminder: you have until this Friday to enter the 2012 Exceptional DBA awards. I’m judging, and looking forward to reading the entries next week, so get them in.

A hint: communication skills matter. Take some time and think about what you want to write for each question. Read more

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When I started writing this blog I realized it has been several months since my last post.  I guess that is what happens when you try to write two books at the same time.  Oh well, on to the post.  Back in November of 2009 I published a blog titled,… Read more

I can’t help it. I get really terribly excited when I publish a book. Maybe it should be old hat. Maybe I should be jaded. But I’m just a 12 year old (it’s been argued 10) in reality so I get really, really jumping up & down excited when I… Read more