One of the most important take-aways from David Dewitt’s presentation at the PASS Summit was the level of fear within the Query Processing team at Microsoft caused by regressions. If you missed Dr. Dewitt’s presentation, I tried to capture as much of it as I… Read more

I got my FreeCon. What’s more, I did it in public and didn’t get in trouble.

FreeCon is the brain child of Brent Ozar (blog|twitter). Basically Brent gathered together a few bloggers & writers from the SQL Server community, some extremely well known, like Tom LaRock… Read more

Most people are very aware of the fact that having a foreign key constraint in place on your tables adds overhead to inserts and deletes. And many people believe that there is no benefit to foreign keys beyond referential integrity (which, the application can handle perfectly well, right?). But is… Read more

Following in Midnight DBA’s more interesting half new blog fest topic.

My branding? I don’t have a clue. There, I said it. Up until very, very recently, I’ve just been doing stuff. I haven’t really even tried to think about what the plan was. Write a book? Sure, sounds like… Read more

Wouldn’t you like to know why the optimizer stopped tuning the execution plan you’re looking at? It’s actually possible and simple to get this information. I talked about this a little more than a year ago, but I left out some information that might be useful.

Let’s take a… Read more

The new book is available in a free download from Red Gate. I had a lot of fun working on the three chapters that I did for this book. The topics I received are near & dear to me because of all the time I’ve spent working on getting… Read more

Or, another way to put it, in most cases, shooting yourself in the foot.

I was not aware that the cumulative update for SQL Server 2008 back in June included a switch that allows you to turn parameter sniffing off within SQL Server. Thanks to Kendra Little (blog| Read more

After all the conversations at FreeCon last week (more on that later, when I’ve assimilated it better), I finally decided to make some changes. The list of things I’m hitting is extremely long, but I’m going to be going through them a few at a time. First, and easiest, was… Read more

Microsoft has announced changes to the MCM program. This page shows all the ways that you can become an MCM without having to spend a month at Microsoft.

I’m interested in this for two reasons. First, I’d love to have the opportunity to try to become an MCM. Making it… Read more

Today is Dr. Dewitt.

The ballroom, where the keynotes are held, is filled with extra chairs. The Summit organizers expect extra attendance today, and well they should. Dr. Dewitt was amazing last year. I suspect this year will be more of the same.

Rick Heiges is introducing the day (waiting… Read more

Today is Kilt Day at the PASS Summit. We’re going to try to arrange a group photo at lunch time.

The network connection is extremely slow. I suspect the tweeting about the kilts.

Bill Graziano is leading the key note and he started off with having all the kilted stand.… Read more

Ted Kummert is still talking.

For the cloud, of course, they’re talking about SQL Azure. Microsoft really is throwing themselves into the cloud, completely. The emphasis is that they offer both a cloud and an on-premises solution. I don’t mind saying, I’m still trying to get the full business proposition… Read more

Mark Souza from the SQL CAT Team, some of the smartest & most capable of MS consultants in SQL Server, is presenting how his team is offering a health check for people’s SQL Server systems.

There going to actually be using some technology to do this little event called SQL… Read more

Sitting at the big kids table at the PASS Summit, ready to rock and roll. The Summit has not officially started yet, but it’s been a fantastic ride already. I’m getting to meet a bunch of great and amazing people. I made my very first trip out to the Microsoft… Read more

I’m sitting in Top Pot Donut. I’m having a fantastic apple fritter. I’m also trying out the capabilities of the WordPress Android app. So far so good. I wouldn’t want to try doing hard core technical posts from this but it works. I can even add photos.

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This is just another reminder to please vote for my blog post on using PowerShell Remoting with SQL Server. It’s a post I’m proud of.

Also, I think that Gail Shaw (blog|twitter) is one heck of a great blogger. She has multiple posts in several categories.… Read more

A week from now will be Kilt Day at the PASS Summit. It’s probably way too late to order a kilt at this point. But, don’t despair. You can still take part. Just a short walk from the Summit is the headquarters of Utilikilt. These are not classic… Read more

Quote: “Database stuff, all this programming stuff, is easy. Anyone can do it. That’s why everyone in the company has sa privileges.”

For nine months, I worked in an environment where everyone, from developers to QA to the sales people to the receptionist, had SA privileges. You know what? DBA… Read more

Right, I said I wouldn’t compete, but I can’t help pointing out that I’m pretty proud of this particular blog post that is in the Management and Automation category.  I thinki the number one tool for automation of administration of SQL Server, and pretty much all of Microsoft’s server technologies,… Read more

As if the US Election and SQL Rally voting were not enough (and have you voted yet for the SQL Rally Pre cons? Polls close tomorrow at 8PM), I just found out that SQLServerPedia is holding an awards vote. You only have a week, so get on over… Read more