This is just a quick tip to help with folks who present SQL code at events such as SQL Saturday. While most presenters use tools like ZoomIt (which if you present, please please learn to use this wonderful, free tool) sometimes it can get nauseating for attendees to watch you… Read more

Just a quick note that I’ll be presenting this weekend, Saturday May 11th, at SQLSaturday in Rochester, NY. Exciting to return to Central New York as I graduated right down the road at Syracuse University. Go Orange!?If you’re in the area come on down,… Read more

First off, I’m sorry this space has been dead for so long. I’m sure I’ve dropped off many an RSS reader (as well as SQLRockstar’s Rankings) due to inactivity. Well, it’s high time I get back on the blogging wagon! So what’s happened since the last post (YIKES!) in… Read more

Do you like training? Do you like FREE training? Then make sure you check out the 24 Hours of PASS event that starts today at 12:00 GMT. If you miss the events of the day, no worries, the recordings will be up within a few weeks.

Check out the great… Read more

SELECT * FROM…when administrators see that from developer code, we generally tend to cringe. Why? In a nutshell, it’s terrible on a few fronts. First, typically that SELECT * FROM that gets written (a lot of the times) lacks a WHERE clause. What’s the problem? Well, that pulls back every… Read more

Being a DBA is like being a train conductor. One of the biggest responsibilities is making sure all jobs are running as expected, or making sure “all the trains are running on time” so to speak. As my partner-in-crime Devin Knight (Blog | Twitter) posted earlier, we… Read more

Today’s Monday Morning Mistake issue is another painfully common one that we all run into at some point. You’ve got some new code given to you by a developer that’s supposed to be ran against QA (because you’re a good DBA and you don’t grant developers access to anything outside… Read more

Pragmatic Works has now released version 3.5 of the award-winning BIxPress software! For those not familiar with BIxPress it’s a tool that helps you develop SSIS/SSAS solutions faster, easily/quickly deploy SSIS packages, monitor performance SSIS packages and much, much more!

So what’s new with 3.5? In addition… Read more

Now that SQL Server 2012 is generally available to the public, many companies are looking at the new platform and trying to figure out how to move to it and take advantage of all the new cool features. Unfortunately, some folks haven’t… Read more

This is just a quick post to remind folks who are current Microsoft MVPs that Pragmatic Works offers NFR licenses of its software! This NFR offer includes:

• BIxPress – Audit, Notify, Deploy and Manage SSIS Packages
• BIDocumenter – One Stop Documentation Solution for SQL Server, SSAS, SSRS and…

Read more

I just wrapped up my 24 Hours of PASS session on consolidation. A big THANK YOU again to everyone in attendance, who kindly put up with my horrendous rapping “skills”! As promised, below is the link to the slide deck. In the presenter’s notes you’ll find some good links and… Read more

Welcome back to another addition of Monday Morning Mistakes series. Today’s issue is one I tend to run into quite often with clients and is an important topic to know about as a database administrator. Without further ado, let’s get to our issue

Issue

You have SQL Server database engine… Read more

SSIS Expressions

Expressions in SSIS are great. They allow you to create dynamic values for all sorts of stuff like variables, connection strings, properties for almost anything, etc. One huge issue that tends to trip up a lot of folks, especially those new to SSIS, is the evaluation of those… Read more

Inspired by common emails and questions I  see, I figured I’d do a series of blog posts on common mistakes folks make with SQL Server called Monday Morning Mistakes (or #sqlM3 for short, since we all love quick hashtags these days). These are meant as quick fixes, nothing too comprehensive.… Read more

I’m in the middle of a database migration and thought I’d quickly share a script I threw together to show estimated time of completion for a database restore in progress on SQL Server. The script will also show you estimated time for database backups to complete as well.

Please don’t… Read more

This week we’re going to talk about a topic that has been gaining steam in the last few years and as it has it has started impacting database administrator’s worlds more and more: virtualization. Why do I make this statement? Well since the economy currently sucks, shops are finding ways… Read more

Well this was quite the little surprise this morning. Microsoft announced a new edition to the SQL Server lineup for 2012 – Business Intelligence edition. In addition to a new edition (funnily I don’t see Datacenter in that lineup) we also have a new licensing scheme for SQL Server. In… Read more

If you’ve worked with SSIS for any amount of time, you may quickly come to find that the native way of deploying packages can be…cumbersome. The native tools, while helpful, aren’t exactly the most intuitive to setup or use. This post will show you how… Read more

Today I was planning on writing a summary post of PASS Summit experience but something happened last night that caused me to change up the queue for blog posts and quite frankly bothered me. Today I’d like to address a few things regarding the Community, behavior within it and just… Read more

CLOUD! BIG DATA! EXCEL! CLOUD! CLOUD! Okay, recap done. Not really…sort of. In all honesty, while delivered in a fairly terrible fashion, there were some pretty big announcements made in today’s keynote. First let’s start with the one a lot of folks have been waiting on….

Official Names Revealed

The… Read more