The Database Hive for SQL Server DBAs - All Comments

Workplace Discrimination in Quebec - part 2: Ignoring the Warning Signs

The Database Hive for SQL Server DBAs — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 16:08:29 GMT

My Dearest Mister André Pratte, Regarding your article in the Globe and Mail , I was quite surprised

Montreal as a City State: Can a DBA Go Beyond their Workplace to Provoke Change in their Region?

The Database Hive for SQL Server DBAs — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:33:21 GMT

I am very impressed with Michel David’s work, and openly endorse much of his great piece of work at MontrealCityState

Montreal as a City State: Can a DBA Go Beyond Their Workplace To Provoke Change In Their Region?

The Database Hive for SQL Server DBAs — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 06:34:58 GMT

I am very impressed with Michel David’s work, and openly endorse much of this great piece of work at

Montreal as a City State: Can a DBA Go Beyond Their Workplace To Provoke Change In Their Region?

The Database Hive for SQL Server DBAs — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 06:34:57 GMT

I am very impressed with Michel David’s work, and openly endorse much of this great piece of work at

Montreal as a City State: Can a DBA Go Beyond Their Workplace To Provoke Change In Their Region?

The Database Hive for SQL Server DBAs — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 06:34:51 GMT

I am very impressed with Michel David’s work, and openly endorse much of this great piece of work at

re: Weeding Out Discrimination in the Workplace – A Note to Government Institutions in Quebec, and ex-Premier Bernard Landry

Hugo Shebbeare — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 01:58:16 GMT

Yet another article from the Montreal Gazette that is now gone, no thanks to harassment by the CDPQ I bet:

Feds failed us on ABCP: Caisse

'Double standards' decried: Former head of risk management panel acknowledges collapse was unavoidable

By MARIANNE WHITE, Canwest News ServiceMay 15, 2009

Alban D'Amours, a former head of the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec's risk management committee, criticized federal authorities yesterday for failing to declare a "general market disruption" in the tainted non-bank asset-backed commercial paper (ABCP) when the market collapsed in the summer of 2007.

Had that been done, he said, foreign banks would have been forced to repay the Quebec pension fund manager the $13 billion of non-bank ABCP it held.

"The federal government refused to do so and they have their reasons for it, but I would call it double standards," D'Amours said after testifying before a provincial legislature committee probing the Caisse's $40-billion loss in 2008.

"The federal authorities didn't have any obligation to do that, but it would have been the best thing to do in our view for Canadian investors," D'Amours added.

The federal government and the Bank of Canada intervened later to set up what is known as the Montreal Accord to come up with a workout plan for the ABCP market, he noted.

D'Amours, who headed the risk management committee for almost nine years until March 2008, said the asset-backed commercial paper collapse could not have been avoided.

"It was a worldwide crisis. Don't think it happened only in Quebec or in Canada," he said.

"It happened all over the planet, but elsewhere they had arrangements that forced the banks to repay. But it didn't happen here for the non-bank ABCP."

"General market disruption" is a situation that triggers emergency funding to issuers of asset-backed commercial paper.

Liquidity agreements in part of the Canadian ABCP market were unique in that providers of the emergency funding - mostly foreign banks - would pay back only in case of general market disruption.

But when the market collapsed in 2007, some of those banks said the conditions for providing liquidity had not occurred. Investors, like the Caisse, were left holding paper they could not roll over.

The federal Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions refused to get involved in crisis, saying it is not mandated to oversee the specific non-bank ABCP market.

D'Amours, like other Caisse managers who have testified at the hearings, refused to shoulder any blame for what they call a "perfect storm" that hit the pension fund by surprise.

"I'm not here to excuse what the Caisse has done with the ABCP. I'm here to make sure we understand what happened," he said.

But D'Amours was at a loss to explain why the pension fund manager accounted for a third of the $32-billion ABCP market.

He acknowledged the risk management committee didn't know exactly how much ABCP the Caisse had bought.

"We didn't have an aggregate of all ABCP products. My only regret is that I didn't have the intuition to ask for it before August," when the market crashed, D'Amours said.

Also yesterday, Quebec Pension Plan president André Trudeau told the committee that his organization became aware that its portfolio, managed by the Caisse, contained massive ABCP investments only when the market collapsed in August 2007.

"We never requested investments in ABCP," he said. "It was up to the Caisse to make those specific investments."

A DBA's Role with Respect to Improving Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Performance

The Database Hive for SQL Server DBAs — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 20:59:01 GMT

Microsoft's Customer Relationship Management platform runs on SQL Server and falls under most of

A DBA's Role with Respect to Improving Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Performance

The Database Hive for SQL Server DBAs — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 20:58:59 GMT

Microsoft's Customer Relationship Management platform runs on SQL Server and falls under most of

re: Weeding Out Discrimination in the Workplace – A Note to Government Institutions in Quebec, and ex-Premier Bernard Landry

Hugo Shebbeare — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 14:50:43 GMT

The link I added back on March 17, 2009 10:20 AM

is now dead (probably bullied by Landry directly to take it down), but thankfully reprinted here:

www.vigile.net/La-Gazette-Landry-s-ethnic-focus

Ignoring this problem or not talking about it doesn't make it go away: le Québec, mon cher, lâchez le nombril et regardez dans le miroir un peu.

re: Spare Yourself Installation Issues by Downloading the Latest SQL 2008 ISO Image

Hugo Shebbeare — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 01:42:56 GMT

Sweet Oran, sorry, I only just caught up with comments now, thank you very much for sharing & your solution too :)

re: Spare Yourself Installation Issues by Downloading the Latest SQL 2008 ISO Image

Oran Levin — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 16:39:56 GMT

Ok, we figured it out. The CD drive was setup in VMWare to use "Atapi Emulation." We changed it to "Access Drive Directly" and it works fine.

I wish I would have tried that a few days ago. :)

Oran

re: Spare Yourself Installation Issues by Downloading the Latest SQL 2008 ISO Image

Oran Levin — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 16:14:12 GMT

I have been having the same problems on a Windows Server 2003 host. I went on MSDN to look for the latest ISO images and they are all from August 2008. I downloaded the standard edition but I still received the same error.

Are there any other later ISO files for SQL Server?

Do you have any other things to try?

The strangest part is that we have already successfully installed SQL server 2008 using the same DVD's on Win 2k3 Host (Using the same base VM image) before. I don't know why it all of sudden stopped working!?

Thanks,

Oran

Workplace Discrimination in Quebec - part 2: Ignoring the Warning Signs - The Database Hive for SQL Server DBAs

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 02:33:21 GMT

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re: Disaster Recovery for SQL Server Databases

Hugo Shebbeare — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 17:09:57 GMT

Thank you Master Phil Factor, I do my best to please both linguistic communities when I can. Un dia, quando tengo mas tiempo y dinero, una copia en Espagnol viene tambien.

Regarding templates, glad you mentioned that. I have also made an attempt to provide a Microsoft Project Template for Migrations also, in this post:

www.sqlservercentral.com/.../microsoft-project-migration-template-for-the-move-to-sql-2008.aspx I just need to update it thanks to input from Brent Ozar. The current file is here: www.intellabase.com/ProjectTemplate_Production_DB_Migration_SQL2008.rar

I also have a bilingual generic COBIT template for Change/Risk Management which will be uploaded for my next post. While consulting for Dell/Nexio at Tata Telecom in 2007, these change management documents were really a gift from above, and ensured that the environment was controlled - and considering the almost eighty thousand resources at TCS' disposition, you can imagine the absolute requirement to do so.

Disaster Recovery Scenarios with HP Data Protector

The Database Hive for SQL Server DBAs — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 15:06:08 GMT

Let's say it is a late Monday morning, because something always comes up before you are required