Other than changing planes once at Heathrow Airport, I've never been to England, so I'm getting really excited about traveling there next week for SQLBits 9 - Query across the Mersey!

My wife and I will be spending a couple of days in London first, and since I'm a… Read more

Last weekend, as I was waiting for the start of the performance of the Cleveland Orchestra at its summer outdoor venue, Blossom Music Center, a client called with a problem. The databases on his principal production server had failed over to the mirror server, and now he couldn't connect… Read more

As Adam Machanic said, Fall is the busy season for speaking, and it will be for me. Here's a brief list of what's coming up:

On Saturday, September 17 I'll be in Kalamazoo, Michigan for SQL Saturday #84, where I'll be presenting my Automate Policy-Based Management using PowerShell.… Read more

For the last year and a half or so I've been presenting a session on how to gather perfmon data with PowerShell. Here's a link to my blog after the 2010 Tech Ed conference that has the download scripts. These scripts include the database tables and stored procedures I use… Read more

Last fall, and winter, and spring I was part of the PASS Election Review Committee. It was interesting, sometimes fun, sometimes frustrating, but a very rewarding experience.

My first PASS conference was in the fall of 2003, and I've attended every one since then. The PASS community, as I've… Read more

The IT Con event this Saturday, June 18, is an event similar to SQL Saturday. It has three tracks, an IT Professional track, a Development track and a Career Development track. I'll be presenting two sessions in the IT Professional track.

Gather SQL Server Performance Data with PowerShell

We all… Read more

Mark Freeman (@m60freeman) posted a question on Twitter using the #sqlhelp hashtag today, asking "Does anyone have a script to assign db_backupoperator for all databases in an instance to a login?" I looked and didn't really have anything that fit, but felt it'd be useful to understand the SMO process… Read more

Security is an important consideration when designing a database application. Who can get access to what data? How much damage can someone do if they get at your data?

In SQL Server 2005 Microsoft implemented column-based encryption, and in SQL Server 2008 they added Transparent Data Encryption. Both solutions work… Read more

Yesterday I delivered a session for the PASS DBA Virtual Chapter on Service Broker. In preparing for the session I was having trouble with my demo environment.

Since early this year, after I upgraded my laptop to a Lenovo W510 with 10GB RAM, I've been using VM Workstation for my… Read more

Over time it's easy to lose track of the things you set up to get work done. As a consultant, I have to discover what's set up on a client system. In either case, it's important to know what security settings are in place to know if they're appropriate and… Read more

Another quick check I like to do when in 'discovery mode' on a client system is to see what network protocols are enabled. Those of us around in 2003 will remember well the headaches caused by the SQL Slammer virus, and know to shut down Named Pipes unless it's absolutely… Read more

As a consultant I spend much of the first day or two at a client site discovering everything I can about their servers, before I start planning the engagement. You can find DDL triggers by going into the Object Explorer in Management Studio, open up each database, select Programmability, then… Read more

Lately I've been working on scripts to check and set security and configuration settings for SQL Server using PowerShell. One of the settings that I normally set and forget at install time is the Authentication Mode setting. Best practices suggest that you set this to Windows Authentication, but my experience… Read more

This year the Program Committee decided to open up the selection process to the community. I'm anxious to see how well this is received, since it'll be the people who are actively online and aware of the process who'll influence the sessions that are selected.

I've submitted four regular sessions… Read more

In working on applications at client sites you tend to come across code that makes you think "what were they thinking"? This week I found one that just made me do the "facepalm": select top 1 @_StateTrueKey = OverEngineeredKey from OverEngineered where...(read more)

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A Twitter user asked for a script to remove old backups, and I had one I built back in February, so here it is (use at your own risk): #rmbackup.ps1 # Removes database and transaction log backups # # Change log: # February 2, 2010: Allen White # Initial...(read…

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SQL Saturday - Columbus, OH, June 26, 2010 I'll be presenting two sessions this Saturday (June 26, 2010) in Columbus, OH - XQuery Basics and Gather SQL Server Performance Data with PowerShell . The event takes place at Goodwill Columbus, 1331 Edgehill...(read more)

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Last week I presented a couple of sessions at Tech Ed NA in New Orleans. It was a great experience, even though my demos didn't always work out as planned. Here are the sessions I presented: DAT01-INT Administrative Demo-Fest for SQL Server 2008 SQL Server...(read more)

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After finally getting a Service Broker solution implemented successfully, I'm really impressed with the technology, and frustrated how difficult it can be to implement and get it really working as expected. First, understand the technology. There are...(read more)

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A while back I blogged about using Checklists , but there's another task you want to incorporate into your workflow - documentation. Now, I'm not just talking about documenting the logic, system flow and data and structure changes, I'm also talking about...(read more)

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