Last week at the PASS Summit, I had several conversations with several different aspiring bloggers, and found myself saying the same things again and again. Of course, these were the things (a) I was told when I was an aspiring blogger, or (b) I wish I had been told as… Read more

A while back, I wrote a simple little query that lets you Get Index Included Column Info (because sp_help and sp_helpindex only show non-included index columns).  More recently, I’ve been wanting not only a better way to look at index information, but a way to compare indexes…for example, to find… Read more

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This week we’re starting up a health and weight loss competition that I hereby dub #PASSGameOn, because it ends right before PASS Summit (no, you don’t have to attend PASS to participate). Tom LaRock (Twitter, blog)  and I are hosting!

Here’s what… Read more

Last week, Sri Sridharan (Twitter, blog) and I sat down on the Internet to talk about his run for the PASS Board of Directors. Due to various difficulties*, the resulting video is a ridiculous-looking hack bit cobbled together, but the audio’s just fine.  And really, isn’t it… Read more

Last week I received this comment/question from one of my fabulous First Timers:

I have a good natured question coming from an jaded old bitter DBA, what’s all the hype? I’ve been to a few conferences and I usually just show up, find the interesting or necessary presentations and go…

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Hi there ho there everybody! It’s less than five (FIVE!) three (THREE!) one (ONE!!) week until the 2012 PASS Summit in Seattle, I am now the Fearless Leader for a group of PASS Summit First-Timers!  Again! This is the page wherein I record all of my sage advice and… Read more

On October 13, Dallas will hold our second ever Special Bi Edition of SQLSaturday Dallas - #SQLSat163 for you Twitter folk - and the day before that Sean is holding a precon titled Become an Enterprise DBA!

Edit: We have decided to offer all of the Enterprise DBA…

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I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat in a training room, in the middle of a week long conference, and thought “You know what would really make this? Snorkeling and shuffleboard after!”  At last, my wish has come true.

This January, Sean and I will be boarding a… Read more

Let’s pretend we’ve never met. Depending on who you are, maybe we haven’t. It’s beside the point, really.

So hi, I’m Jen McCown. My husband Sean and I are SQL Server people – between the two of us, we boast 1 MCM, 6 MVP awards, 25 years as DBAs, and… Read more

Post-webcast update: The webcast went well! We talked, we QnA’ed, we gave out a free Roadmap, and all attendees got a discount code.  I’ve been asked several times, so I went ahead and posted the full Live Meeting recording over on www.DBARoadmap.com:

Click here to see “The Art… Read more

The big furor today is over PASS‘s new written Code of Conduct. I’m going to crib unashamedly from Nic Cain’s blog post “Mind Your P’s and Q’s” to get this started, because he’s a friend and won’t mind (especially with the link), and because it’s a busy… Read more

Here’s a quick reminder for those of you using log shipping, and checking the SSMS report “Transaction Log Shipping Status” to assure you that your log shipping is up to date: that report is not always accurate. (I’m looking right now at a report that claims Database1 hasn’t been restored… Read more

I’ve been out of town and off the grid – nothing like 10 days of family camping and roadtripping to unwind! – and now I’m back in black. Well, black polka dotted jammies, but that’s beside the point.

I received this email while on vacation, with a request for… Read more

I just sent this off to a fellow DBA who wanted some resources. You may also be one of those, so here you go…

Here are a few of the better resources, just off the top of my head:

•  www.MidnightDBA.com, of course! All our tutorials are free and online.

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I just composed and sent this message to eleven members of a single California-based recruitment company. I’ll let the email speak for itself, but you, dear reader, should also know that the positions they reference range from Business Objects to Android programming, with nary a DB job in sight. Read more

This is a topic that’s been well covered, but in the interest of spreading good database practices, here’s a very quick note on instant file initialization (IFI) and database files. (As always, you should read the fine print – meaning Microsoft’s documentation – before you do anything on a production… Read more

I had the opportunity to tune a highly-used function the other day, and was most puzzled by the difference between the old and the new function.  This was on SQL Server 2005, and I was able to repro the issue on-server, but not on my SQL Server 2012 instance.

The… Read more

We’ve been slacking for way too long, but as of this week our video RSS feed is up to date! Now you can subscribe to conveniently get ALL of our videos – tutorials and the DBAS@Midnight webshow (warning: the webshow is explicit for language).

We do have this… Read more

We’re drawing to the end of our third season of DBAs@Midnight (our weekly webshow by DBAs, for DBAs), and to the middle of the summer. What on earth shall we do for the next few months? We considered taking a break from all things SQL*, then thought…naaaah. So far we’ve… Read more

Sean’s giving a precon at SQL Satrurday 163 this October! Oh yeah, and so are Tim Mitchell and David Stein. Here’s the word from the fearless leaders:

In addition to our Special Bi Edition of SQLSaturday #163 Dallas
<http://sqlsaturday.com/163/eventhome.aspx> , let
<http://northtexas.sqlpass.org/> NTSSUG help you immerse…

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