I read a lot, one the most recent books is The 4 Disciplines of Execution which is, of course, about execution. The first few chapters are the most valuable, some really good thoughts on measuring execution, in particular about lagging and leading indicators. Lagging indicators measure what has happened –… Read more

Here are three blogs I’ve been reading recently that are interesting. None about SQL, but you might find some value in them.

• Herding Cats. Project management focused, almost daily content.
• Lean Blog. Lean techniques, including kanban and kaizen, with a healthcare focus.
• Software Project Management. Lots of…

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Back to the list, what should go in this minimalist creation? Here’s what I have so far:

• laptop (yes)
• charger (yes – buy extra once laptop is fine)
• usb cable (12” USB to mini)
• pen
• notepad
• business cards
• phone pocket
• medicine pocket/container
• presentation remote
• usb flash drive
• new bag
  • name…

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Microsoft has released SQL Server 2012 RTM Cumulative Update 3, which is Build 11.00.2332. There are 36 fixes (by my count) in the public fix list.  Since SQL Server 2012 RTM is still fairly new, there are still quite a few hotfixes showing up in these early Cumulative Updates.… Read more

SQL Server 2012 setup program has 2 new installation parameter
1. /UpdateEnabled:
Specify whether SQL Server setup should discover and include product updates. The valid values are True and False or 1 and 0. By default, SQL Server setup will include updates that are found.

2. /UpdateSource
Specify the location…

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This is based on a post with respect to where our focus and efforts should be that I wrote at my Goal Keeping DBA blog:

 

SELECT Task, Priority, DueDate
FROM [What_Is_Important] AS I
  INNER JOIN [What_I_Can_Control] AS C
  ON I.TaskID = C.TaskID
ORDER BY DueDate, Priority, Task;

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Taking some of my own advice. I’m off today and tomorrow, as well as Monday for Labor Day. Across this 5 day weekend, I have a number of chores to tackle, including trying to build another horse shelter before winter.

However I will look to recharge and relax a… Read more

First, I need to set the record straight – I am not a systems guy.  When I need work done to set up a server or install an OS or handle networking, I usually talk to people who know what they are doing.  After the system is ready, I am…

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Earlier this week I RSVP’d to an invitation to sit again at the bloggers table at the Summit. It was nice to be asked, nice to be included. The “bloggers table” is usually at the back of the room for the keynotes, with a good line of sight and of… Read more

Over the past few blog entries, I’ve been looking at parsing TSQL scripts in a variety of ways for a variety of tasks.  In my last entry ‘How to prevent ‘Select *’ : The elegant way’, I looked at parsing SQL to report upon uses of SELECT *. … Read more

The Southwest Missouri SQL Server Users Group (SWMOSSUG) is dedicated to providing SQL Server Education and Career Guidance for IT professionals. While the group focuses on DBAs, T-SQL Developers, and BI Professionals, anyone who works with SQL Server is invited to attend. Membership is free.

SWMOSSUG is a chapter of… Read more

Chicago is a neat down. My first PASS Summit was in Chicago, back in 1999. My wife joined me with an infant son, and we took in the last baseball game of the season that year at Comisky Park. This year I was hoping to take in a game… Read more

• Sword fighting. A friend sent me this, debunks the movie view we have of sword fighting. I can’t say I knew all of this, but if you’ve ever held a sword it’s not hard to realize that it’s going to be an ugly business, not quite the bloodless head…

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This is it, ladies and gentlemen.  One last post and I promise I won’t mention the word audit for at least a week.
Before we begin, let’s take a moment to recap what we’ve covered so far:

• SQLAudit 101 – Creating a basic audit
• SQLAudit 102 – Reading audit output

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Nothing for me to really say except if you mess up, you get a free second chance Click HERE to see the details. So get started on your certifications with the confidence of having a second shot just in case you don’t do so well the first time. Take a…

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September is another busy month of speaking events for me and I thought I’d share them with you so maybe I can see you at one of the events.

Date: 09/08/2012

Group: SQL Saturday #167 Columbus, GA

Topic: Adapting Your ETL Solution to use SSIS 2012

With all the great… Read more

Is SQL in the City coming to a town near you?  The events are being held in New York, Austin, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston and Seattle.  If so you need to make sure to register ASAP as seats are filling up quick and seating is… Read more

I will be the inaugural speaker for the Northern Colorado Database Professionals on September 17, in Loveland, CO. I will be presenting a preview version of my PASS Summit 2012 session about how to migrate to SQL Server 2012. The abstract is below:

Migrating to SQL Server 2012
How do…

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I was helping out on the forums the other day with a user who had stumbled across the quirk of SQL putting in an excessive amount of namespace declarations when using nested select statements as part of a FOR XML statement. There is a connect item already open for this,… Read more

There are 2 suggestions I hear about when performance tuning the Lookup transformation on a large dimension table when getting the surrogate key for a fact table. I hope to introduce here a third.

The first is the caching option.

 

The Full Cache option will cache the whole table… Read more