The Summit proper starts on Wednesday, but the Summit starts at registration. I left a little early from work setting up for SQL in the City: Seattle in order to run up the hill and get to the convention center around the time that it opened. Why? Cause I get… Read more

I’m continuing to work with the Surface.

BOOM

I just had my first crash. I was in IE when I tried to switch tabs and the pull down window would not stay open. So I tried closing IE. That didn’t work at all. I tried switching to the Start window… Read more

More stuff about the Surface.

Web browsing works extremely well so far. I enjoy how you can swipe to move back a page. I like how the tabs work too. I’m not crazy about how long it takes to get the link option window open. You hold on a link… Read more

Let’s talk some more about the basic keyboard. I’m really surprised at how well it works. But, it’s absolutely going to take some getting used to. Here’s some typing I did as a test to see where I missed keys, etc.;

Once upon a midngith dreary while I pondered weak…

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I’m going to do with this what I should have done with the Piece Of Fruit (POF), blog about the experience.

Getting the silly thing required several phone calls and a car trip, but I wanted it.

Out of the box.

It turned on. Yay!

The first thing it wants… Read more

I know I focus on community, SQL Server, professional development and process. But you need to do other stuff occasionally too. For example, I’ve long been a fan of horror stories (and science fiction/speculative fiction and some historical novels and history books and… I like to read, OK?). I received… Read more

It may seem obvious, but I’ve heard more than one person suggest to me that statistics on a clustered index just don’t matter. That if the clustered index can satisfy a given query, it’s going to get selected. That just didn’t make any sense to me, but I haven’t seen… Read more

If you missed all the great speakers on the five city tour of SQL in the City, don’t despair. Many of the same people will be back at SQL in the City in Seattle. It’s scheduled on Monday before the PASS Summit proper starts, so if you’re looking to… Read more

I’m working through some code that I haven’t touched recently and I’m running it for the first time on a SQL Server 2012 server. The code is a way to load information into the RML utilities and I started hitting errors. First, I hit an error that my server couldn’t… Read more

It’s just a query against the database. If things are running slow, buy some more memory, a faster CPU or get a few more disks. Right? Seriously, tuning queries is just a pain and there’s no clear evidence that writing them correctly or tuning them has a major impact. Right? Read more

I’m not a fan of trivia style interview questions. Yes, I ask a few because you have to in order to immediately eliminate the completely unqualified applicants. Even those types of questions, in my opinion, need to be focused on concepts and not syntax. The reason we have the Books… Read more

Yeah, it’s that time again. And we have a magnificent slate of people running. I mean truly amazing and wonderful people. I personally know each and every one of them. I’ve worked with them or watched them work on projects over the years. PASS has a true embarrassment of… Read more

This conference is new to me. In case it’s new to you, I thought I’d take a moment to point it out. Mostly because I’ll be presenting there and I love talking to anyone who has actually read any of the blather I post on my blog. If you want… Read more

Just so we’re clear, I use SQL Server. I like SQL Server. But, this doesn’t mean I have anything against Oracle. It’s fine. It’s good. But, I know very little about it. However, throughout my career I’ve found myself needing to understand it better. Either because I’m trying to train… Read more

I should know. I was one of the judges of this year’s Exceptional DBA of the Year award. I had to read through tons and tons of submissions and help to arrive at a final list of people who truly personify the concept of both the DBA and the exceptional… Read more

I presented a session at the SQL Saturday event in Oklahoma City last weekend. The event itself was pretty good. The organizers put everything together pretty well and the venue was quite nice. Plus, since I grew up in Oklahoma (Tulsa), it was a chance to go home. The event… Read more

It’s time to get your learn on again. The schedule for the Fall 24 Hours of PASS is up and ready for registration. This is the Summit preview session, so many (most, all) of the speakers are showing off some of what you can learn at their sessions at… Read more

A couple of weeks ago I posted about how different execution plans look when using the Azure Management Portal. I promised to look at a more complex plan and here we are. The query looks like this:

SELECT	*
FROM	dbo.Agent AS a
		JOIN dbo.Resource AS r
		ON a.AgentId =…

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I can’t sing and I can’t play and I left the young generation behind a while ago, but I’m still coming to your town, or maybe one near you.

Between August and December I’m hitting a substantial portion of the country, so if you want to have a little fun,… Read more

I read an excellent article by Camille Fournier about the importance of recognizing that being right is not the only factor that needs to be taken into consideration when making a decision. You could even change it from “being” right to “doing” right. Although, I mean it in a technical… Read more