As some of you may be aware, triggers are not my favourite thing in the world but like most things, it does have its place.

Whilst onsite with one of my clients, one of the processes fires a trigger on insert which ultimately runs a SSRS subscription to email a… Read more

Just a very quick blog today regarding an issue that has arisen with one of my clients. During Integration it became apparent that one table in particular was failing during the weekly consistency checks, the error being output:

DBCC results for ‘sys.extended_index_1696529623_384000′.

There are 313423 rows in 1627 pages for…

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I finally pulled my finger out and took the last exam of the MCSE SQL Server 2012 – Data Platform certification last week and passed with a score of 876 which is pretty respectable in my opinion

The exam consisted of 3 sections:

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Well I finally got around to completing the MCSA aspect of the SQL Server 2012 Certification and I’m pleased to say i passed with flying colours. As some of you may be aware I managed to nab and pass 3 of the Beta exams (70-461, 70-462 and 70-465) back in… Read more

I wouldn’t class myself as an expert in SSIS but I certainly know my way around but came across something today which I thought I’d share. As with a lot of things there are “many ways to skin a cat”, none of which is something I’ll go into at the… Read more

Being a 2011 finalist I felt I should try and rally all those who truly are exceptional to get their nominations in and quick sharp as the closing date is getting close.

I was lucky enough to be nominated for this award last year and wasn’t going to follow it… Read more

Well after being a bit late in trying to book the beta exams I managed to get three of the five I needed for the MCSE data platform booked, taken and I’m pleased to say passed!

Unfortunately due to the fact I did 461, 462 and 465 means I don’t… Read more

Well I’ve now done the final SQL Server 2012 exam I managed to get a slot booked for. The Querying Microsoft SQL Server 2012 exam wasn’t going to be my strongest subject as I’m more of a DBA than Developer but i felt it went quite well.
The exam consisted… Read more

After sitting the Administering Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Databases Beta exam (71-462) on Monday, I was still a little disappointed with Microsofts approach to questioning for these exams. So I went into this exam with pretty much the same mindset that the questions were going to be vague and in… Read more

On Monday I did my first Microsoft SQL Server exam since I did my SQL Server 2000 exams many moons ago and I can’t believe the quality of questioning hasn’t changed one bit! Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t all plain sailing but for me, what made it difficult was… Read more

Sorry for another Powershell post but I’ve been doing a lot of it recently and coming up with (what i think are) a few nifty tricks.

One of the issues I encountered recently was with Kerberos delegation whilst trying to automate Log Shipping. What I was trying to do was… Read more

Not blogged for a while due to client and project commitments but something which has surprised me when speaking with colleagues both past and present is that when I mention the built in function OBJECT_DEFINITION, the majority of DBA’s haven’t heard of it, never mind used it. So i felt… Read more

As I imagine that the majority of people who are reading this will have some level of SSIS knowledge, I’ll not go into explanations about package configurations in SSIS and its various methods but rather jump straight to it.

The majority of environments I’ve worked in where SSIS packages are… Read more

I’ve recently decided I’ve got to get with the times and started dabbling with Powershell. Up until now i’ve not really seen any use (as a DBA) for it from a SQL Server perspective as I’ve been able to achieve pretty much everything in the past using TSQL, VBScript and/or… Read more

On Wednesday 13th July at 16:06 (GMT) I got what could only be described as the biggest shock of my 31 years on this planet – an email from the Exceptional DBA Awards 2011 saying that I’d made it as one of the final five! To say it’s an honour… Read more

For those of you who’ve worked with NetApp and SnapManager for SQL Server, you will know can generate a scheduled backup as a SQL Agent Job. Simple, click through the GUI, selecting the Databases you want to backup, the schedule etc etc and a job is created with a command… Read more

An ex colleague and good friend of mine has recently been having trouble with Snapmanager for SQL, anyone had similar troubles? Would be interesting to see peoples thoughts on this as i share his concerns….

Bearing in mind that this may very well be down to human (sysadmin) error… Read more

As I imagine (or hope), the majority of us adhere to some form of standards in the environment that they work in. Whether that be whether you have to wear a Shirt and Tie, be in for 9am or those of us in a Database or Development environment, Coding Standards. Read more

As part of my blogging I’ll be periodically providing readers with a collection of my scripts which I use on a daily basis (collected over the years) and hopefully others can gain from these and utilise them going forward.

Today i’m providing a list of Database Mail scripts I use… Read more

After reviewing a number of clients overnight index defrag / rebuild scripts over the years, I’m intrigued to know how many of us actually set the page count filter when capturing the fragmentation levels.

I know there’s a lot of debate around the value to set and personally I set… Read more