I have been thinking about getting the MCT credential for about five years.  During the MVP Summit I attended a session titled "So, you want to be an MCT".  They convinced me that this might be a good idea, and I began looking at the requirments. One of the requirments… Read more

Using cursors is a controversal topic. As a former developer, that is the way I thought about processing data at one time. I gave a talk to a VB group a couple of years ago where I compared using cursors, correlated subqueries, etc., to other techniques to show the performance differences. A lively… Read more

As I thought might happen, I was too busy after Tuesday and Wednesday to report in. Tuesday was my first trip ever to the Microsoft Campus so I was very excited. I attended serveral sessions during the day that went over features of SQL Server 2008. I was especially interested in… Read more

I'm sure that Monday was the most relaxed day that we will have this week. The conference did not start until 11:30, so I had time to visit the gym and take a walk down to the pier.  I have seen many cyclists riding downhill, but have not seen one riding uphill… Read more

I arrived Sunday in Seattle from St. Louis for the MVP Global Summit. The shuttle from the airport was filled with other MVPs on the way to hotels as well. I met Rachel Appel, an ASP.Net MVP, on the shuttle and we immediately became friends. After getting settled in our rooms… Read more

I made the decision today to start using SQL Server 2008 Management Studio at work to manage my 2000 and 2005 instances. Not sure why I didn’t think of it before. I’ve had the latest CTP on my work laptop since it was released and knew that it would work… Read more

Yesterday I found out that I am a new SQL Server MVP.  I still have the feeling that I am an "imposter" and that I don't deserve such an honor. I have spent lots of my weekends and evenings over the past three years writing articles and book chapters, recording… Read more

I am here in sunny Orlando at End to End Training. I am very impressed with the new training facility. Andy has reported on all the work that went into get this new facility going and it has been well worth it. I am working with a group of 8 very… Read more

Over the last three years, since that first article I submitted to SQLServerCentral, I find myself getting involved in more and more projects. Recently, I agreed to teach a two day T-SQL course for End to End Training. I have to admit, Steve, Brian and Andy have really helped me… Read more

I just shut down a SQL Server that has been in production since 2003. Next week I'll let the server team know that they can decommission it. I have been looking forward to this for several months. This server hosted our financial accounting database which was upgraded back in August.… Read more

If you are anywhere near St. Louis next Wednesday night, I will be speaking at the St. Louis Visual Basic User Group at 7:00 pm on T-SQL Enhancements for SQL Server 2005 and 2008.  Click here for more information: http://www.stlvbug.net/dnn/ .

Just a reminder that I will be teaching a two-day… Read more

One way to find the rows from one table that don't match another table is to use a sub-query. Here is an example:

--create and populate tables
create table table1(col1 int null)
create table table2(col1 int null)

insert into table1(col1)
select 1
UNION select 2
UNION select 3

insert into table2(col1) Read more

After a couple of months of discussion, End to End Training has scheduled me to teach a two day beginning T-SQL course for them.  One of the best aspects of End to End Training is that the courseware is written by the trainers. It’s a lot more work to… Read more

I finally sat for 70-431 on Thursday. I know, I am at least a year behind everyone else. There is not as much emphasis placed on keeping certs current at my law firm job. It would be a different story if I worked in consulting.   

 

Anyway, it… Read more

I recently wrote an article on owners vs schemas for SQLTeam thinking that I had this all figured out. So now I am studying for 70-431 and ran across an item on broken ownership chains. This is the problem when a view has a different owner than a table or…

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There was a time that I avoided bcp utility like the plague. A few years ago, we needed to set up a once a month job to transfer about 100 GB of data from one server to another. Since this involved two SQL Server 2000 instances, the first attempt was… Read more

I work almost exclusively with third party applications. I don't get to do a lot of tuning except for reports and automating stuff. One of the apps at the law firm where I work is our document managment system (DMS). Over the years I have learned that the vendor did…

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We are trying to move to version 2 of our accounting data warehouse (more likely called a datamart), but it just doesn't have everything the department needs yet. So, we still have version 1 running, a system that gets updated just once each month instead of each night. The warehouses were… Read more

When I first got into IT full time 10 years ago, I noticed that my mind was constantly solving programming problems or thinking of programs I could write. If I had someone else to talk to at the time, I was a normal human, or at least as normal as…

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This was my 5th year at PASS and every year I enjoy catching up with old friends and meeting many more.

SUNDAY

I arrived safely and was in my hotel room by about 2 pm. I am the Program Committee Manager and the board member I report to, Bill Graziano,…

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