At the 2003 PASS Summit in Seattle the organization had a "SIG Challenge" that involved developing a database solution to a business problem. They assigned people to teams and allowed us to work on the problem only when sessions weren't occurring, but...(read more)

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In a followup to Aaron Bertrand's recent blog post on Disaster Recovery, I'd like to mention something I always mention when I teach SQL Server classes. One of the best sources of training I received for being a DBA was, in fact, the training I received...(read more)

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Over the weekend I received the great news that I've been selected to present a new session, Gather SQL Server Performance Data with PowerShell, at the 2009 PASS Summit in Seattle.

Here's the abstract:

We all know how important it is to keep a baseline of performance metrics that allow… Read more

My first whitepaper for Microsoft, Understanding and Using PowerShell Support in SQL Server 2008 has been published. It was a great honor to have been selected to write the paper, and I thank Kalen Delaney for giving me the opportunity. I hope you find it useful.

Allen

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Scripting tasks in PowerShell is a fairly easy way to automate tasks, but you have to know when you get errors and what the real error is. There have been quite a number of blog posts on how to handle errors in PowerShell, like this one by Joel 'Jaykul' Bennett.… Read more

I talk a lot about scripting tasks on our servers to automate our regular processes, but in this case I'm talking about a different kind of script.

When I first started college, I was a Theatre major. Of course, I learned pretty quickly that my success in that field would… Read more