The long wait for the new, mobile Sandy Bridge processor equipped laptops is nearly over. Most of the large system vendors have announced their new lines, and systems are starting to actually ship.

These machines will have significantly better performance and better battery life than their 2010 vintage predecessors.

Below… Read more

I will be doing a live, virtual presentation for the Columbus, Ohio SQL Server User’s Group on Thursday, April 14. The meeting is from 6PM till 8PM, Eastern time, and I believe that my presentation will start at about 6:45PM.

Here is the title and abstract:

Dr. DMV: How to…

Read more

Microsoft’s Brad Anderson announced the availability of the Release Candidate of Microsoft System Center Advisor today in his keynote presentation at the Microsoft Management Summit 2011 in Las Vegas.

This is a new product that periodically captures configuration information about your servers (that you have added to the product), and… Read more

Microsoft has released SQL Server 2008 SP2 Cumulative Update 3, which is Build 10.00.4279.00. I count 25 fixes listed in the Knowledge Base article for the Cumulative Update.

Here is the SQL Server 2008 CU Build Matrix:

-- SQL Server 2008 RTM is considered an "unsupported service pack" as…

Read more

Microsoft has released  SQL Server 2008 SP1 Cumulative Update 13, which is Build 10.00.2816.00. I count twelve fixes listed in the Knowledge Base article for the Cumulative Update.

I am a little surprised that they did not skip the unlucky number 13, but I am not actually superstitious about… Read more

Microsoft has released SQL Server 2005 SP4 Cumulative Update 3, which is Build 9.0.5266. There are only five fixes listed in the KB article for this final release. Here is what Microsoft says about the release:

SQL Server 2005 SP4 CU 3 marks the final Cumulative Update release for…

Read more

Microsoft has released SQL Server 2005 SP3 Cumulative Update 15, which is Build 9.0.4325. There are only six fixes included in this final release. Here is what Microsoft says about the release:

SQL Server 2005 SP3 CU 15 marks the final Cumulative Update release for SQL Server 2005 SP3…

Read more

One thing I always do lately, whenever I give a presentation is ask the audience how many of them use Twitter. In most cases, less than half of the audience is on Twitter, and it is often much lower than that.

This gives me an opportunity to spend a few… Read more

I will be teaching two classes for the Spring 2011 Quarter at University College – University of Denver. One will be on campus, and one will be online.

The on campus class will be ICT 4415 Database Backup and Recovery w/Lab , which despite the title, will be more… Read more

Here is the first SQL Server Denali–specific version of my Diagnostic Information Queries. There are actually only two queries (which are marked in the script) that are different from the SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 version of these queries.

There will be additional Denali-specific items added in the… Read more

I will be presenting at the Boulder SQL Server User’s Group (BSSUG) on March 15, 2011. My presentation will be on “Hardware 201: Selecting and Sizing Database Hardware for OLTP Performance”.  Here is the abstract:

The foundation of database performance is the underlying server hardware and storage subsystem. Even the…

Read more

I have seen a few people get confused about the difference between a mirrored database backup (which is only available in SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition and above) and a striped database backup.

A Mirrored Backup is simply a database backup where two copies of the database backup file are… Read more

We have been doing some more work with SQL Azure lately, so I have put together a small collection of queries that are pretty useful if you are working with SQL Azure. As a DBA who likes to know what is going on with my database servers and individual databases,… Read more

Here is a collection of 13 short (less than 10 minutes each) videos about improvements in SQL Server Denali, and in some cases SQL Server 2008 R2 that are posted on Channel 9. They were all added on March 4, 2011.

These are basically high level conceptual videos with Program… Read more

I will be giving a virtual presentation via LiveMeeting on March 10, 2011. The S3OLV User Group meeting starts at 6:30PM PST. My presentation will be “Hardware 201: Selecting and Sizing Database Hardware for OLTP Performance”. Here is the abstract:

The foundation of database performance is the underlying server hardware…

Read more

Microsoft has released the RTM version of Visual Studio 2010 SP1, which is available on the MSDN Subscribers web site.

Microsoft’s Jason Zander has an interim fix list for SP1 available here. Microsoft’s Brian Harry has the  Team Foundation Server (TFS) related fixes listed here. Finally, Microsoft’s Amit… Read more

Another month, and another new version of my SQL Server Diagnostic Information queries for both SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008/2008 R2. I have uploaded the scripts for each version to DropBox (see the links below).

There are two new queries in this version:

-- Get total buffer usage…

Read more

I just wanted to post a link to my presentation on Hardware 201: Selecting and Sizing Database Hardware for OLTP Performance that I gave on March 5, 2011 at the Rocky Mountain Tech Trifecta in Denver, Colorado.

Read more

Microsoft actually released SQL Server 2008 R2 Cumulative Update 6 on February 21, 2011, so I am a little late to blog about it, but I wanted to have a record (since I sometimes use my own blog posts to find things later). This is Build 10.0.1765.0, and I count… Read more

I will be attending and speaking at the Rocky Mountain Tech Trifecta in downtown Denver on March 5, 2011. This is a free, all day event that combines what you would get at a SQLSaturday along with what you would see at a Code Camp. There is .NET, SQL Server,… Read more