We’ve been awfully busy these last few weeks, what with holidays and work and whatnot. But that hasn’t stopped us from publishing 8+ new hours of shows and interviews! For your consideration:

We LOVE Mark

10/13/2011. PASS Special: We make sure we talk to Mark Souza (Twitter, bio Read more

I just ran across this in a piece of code (that I didn’t write):

… WHERE Thing >GETDATE()- 30

Aaaand it works. If you run the title of this blog post, you’ll get the date 30 days ago. I had no idea you could do this…I’m very… Read more

I was inspired by fellow blogger and all around good guy Nic Cain (Twitter, blog) to write about the PASS BoD election, ending 12/20.  Here is Nic’s take on the subject. So, who am I voting for?

I’m not telling you.

It’s not that I don’t… Read more

In 1986, my big brother Jim accidentally encouraged me on my road to geekdom by purchasing an Apple][e, and later by gifting various Apple games to me, and teaching me about pre-Internet BBSs. 

In 1992, my high school purposefully encouraged me on that same road by offering Programming… Read more

I had a brief email discussion recently, which could be effectively be boiled down to:

• Them: “Are foreign key constraints more performant than referential integrity triggers?”
• Me: “Yes.” *stomp*stomp*stomp*stomp* “Yes, they are.”

Let’s start with a generic statement, and get more specific. Generally speaking: Don’t try to circumvent… Read more

Resumes are like opinions, which are like something else: everybody’s got one. And if you don’t have one, then certain key functions are very hard to perform.  In this case, not having a resume makes the job-getting difficult.

We’ve talked about resumes, and even reviewed a few, on the show… Read more

While you wait for my awesome upcoming blog on data exception notification with SSRS, let’s pursue a whim of mine.

I want your techie book recommendations. Write me a tweet @MidnightDBA, or in the comments below, that compels me to read your book of choice. (Yes, you can recommend… Read more

I put out the call to stop SOPA, and one Twitter friend wrote back:

Good luck! We have it in Denmark. First blocking chi1d pr0n, then pharmaceuticals, & now Grooveshark.

I asked if he wouldn’t mind writing up a little bit more on that, and he complied. Thanks, Internet Friend… Read more

This will be an unusually political Un-SQL Friday – and it’s two days early, to boot – but I’m making an exception to my no-politics-in-SQL rule – because it’s about internet freedoms.

I hereby declare this WEDNESDAY Un-SQL Friday. While T-SQL Tuesday is “…the SQL Server blogosphere’s first recurring,…

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In IT, we have a few very solid and universal principles that no one ever argues with.  The first of these is Cover Your Ass (CYA). CYA is so universal and popular because things go wrong, blame gets thrown, and DBAs find themselves under a metaphorical bus.  Nobody likes the… Read more

Each Friday on @Midnight">DBAs@Midnight (my live weekly webshow, 11pm CST at webshow.MidnightDBA.com!) I don’t feel like I have enough time for my Twitter Favorites List segment. This week I realized…hey! I have a blog!  So here’s your weekly Tweet-wrapup.

SQL and Tech blogs

@RachelAppel: Blogged: Stats, data, and… Read more

Calling all unpublished* SQL Server folk!

I’m now accepting abstracts for a new project we’re putting together – a community-written book of tribal SQL Server knowledge.

Theme

The general theme I’m proposing is “write about the thing that a DBA should really know.”  This can encompass everything from… Read more

Let’s apply a little backup and restore knowledge, eh wot?

I introduce this whole concept in Applied SQL: You Have Homework. Find all assignments on the Applied SQL page.

Prerequisites: basic T-SQL, create objects/data, basic understanding of recovery models and backup types.

Reading – SQL Server Books… Read more

We’ve had some BIG fun this week, relatively speaking, with #SQLSue and #SQLIdiot and just general #SQLcraziness. We’ve had several blogs out already, including my Rat Sues Corn! … and Why I Feed Trolls, Jorge Segarra’s heartfelt We Are Community, and Steve Jones’ Is my blog infringing on… Read more

This morning this caught my eye on SQLServerCentral.com: Maximizing SQL Server Throughput with RSS Tuning (it came with a catchy SQLCAT logo!)

So I clicked, I read, I downloaded and read some more. To summarize (BIG summary!), this paper says that in pre-2008 Windows server, the networking protocol stack… Read more

Note: I will be updating this post with, er, updates as I get them…

We’ve had our fair share of plagarists, and even one or two accidental plagarists (see Rats in the Corn Again, Paw!), but we’ve now rolled around to the other side of the field: one… Read more

Today’s keynote with Dr. DeWitt starts at 8:15am EDT. Click here to watch today’s keynote live. For information on today’s keynote, titled “Big Data – What is the Big Deal?“, see the SQLPASS.org page on Keynotes.

Announcement: bradmcgehee: Free download of SQL Server MVP Deep Dives…

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Click here to watch today’s WIT luncheon live. For information on today’s luncheon and speakers, see the SQLPASS.org page on Keynotes.

12:00 Geoff Hitten, BOD member and WIT dude (okay, I don’t know his official title). Introduced Jes Borland. This is… Read more

Today’s keynote with Quentin Clark starts at 8:15am EDT. Click here to watch today’s keynote live. For information on today’s keynote (“a demo-packed adventure across SQL Server solutions that span traditional boxed software, appliances and cloud”) see the SQLPASS.org page on Keynotes.

8:15 Short series of videos promoting… Read more

After this morning’s keynote, I managed to make it down to the expo hall JUST in time to catch Red-Gate’s big announcement. They’re sending a DBA into space.

No, seriously. Red-Gate, arguably already the coolest company in the entire SQLsphere, has launched a contest to send one lucky DBA… Read more