If you read my post from yesterday you will know I will be spending some time on the US east coast at the end of May.Last week my friend and fellow Learning Tree instructor Sharon Dooley asked me if I would like to attend SQL Saturday #200 in Philadelphia which… Read more

 

At the end of this month of May, I will be teaching Learning Tree’s 3 day SQL Server Virtualization course at Learning Tree’s Washington DC’s Rockville education centre. The course will run from Wednesday 29th May through to Friday 31st May. You can enrol for this course by following… Read more

Its been a long winter so far this weekend has seen the first signs of spring here in South Wales, the Sun has been out nearly all weekend. The temperatures have been in double figures most of the time and I even got to cut the grass and fix so… Read more

This is an off-topic post for a Friday. With Cardiff City reaching the premier league this week and all the joy that had brought Cardiff City fans throughout South Wales this week I thought this might make a nice change of topic and a bit of fan on a Friday.… Read more

Well sort of…it took a while.

I’d done some plays and singing at school but my mother made me practice and practice and practice and she  was always in the crowd to cheer me on so it was never that bad, if ever I forgot my lines my mother who… Read more

Learning Tree are offering their 3 day SQL Server High Availability course this April in London. Running between 17th and 19th of April and taught by Chris Radcliffe come and learn all about SQL Server high availability and get your hands dirty with

• SQL Server Clustering
• Database Mirroring
• Availability Groups

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In my session (An Introduction to SQL Server Virtualisation) at SQL Saturday Exeter I told the attendees that I would be making my slide deck available after the event. In my blog post early this week where I reviewed my day at SQL Saturday Exeter I also mentioned that I… Read more

This last weekend I attended my first SQL Server Saturday event. The event was held in The Jury’s Inn in Exeter and was superbly arranged and organised by Jonathan (b|t) and Annette (b) Alan and the great team of volunteers from the SQL South… Read more

Just  short post for a Friday. This Saturday (tomorrow) I will be speaking at SQL Saturday 194 which is being held in Exeter.

If you have already registered then feel free to pop along to my session - I'm the first session in the Babbage starting at 8am. If that's…

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This time tomorrow morning I will be on my feet starting to  deliver a 50 minute session at SQL Saturday in Exeter. My session is titled "An Introduction to SQL Server Virtualisation"
 
If you are attending SQL Saturday #194 in Exeter, plan on making the first session, interested and… Read more

Do you have any plans in place to upgrade to SQL Sever 2012 this year. We are now well into 2013 and its been almost a year since the RTM of SQL Server 2012  which happened 1st April 2012. Service pack 1 (SP1) has been released too (http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=35575),…

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Having just completed the latest revision of Learning Tree's SQL Server Virtualisation and consolidation course I thought I'd share with you where and when it will be running and give you some links so you can enrol
 
The next run is scheduled for Stockholm starting May 22nd - may… Read more

LinkedIn sent me an email on Monday that said my profile was in the top 5% of viewed profiles in 2012!

Check me out yeah I’m a social media mogul.

Then I realised I have no idea what that number means so I did a few calculations. It seems  LinkedIn Read more

I had a great response to my blog post and poll last week about how DBAs use auto grow. In the main it seems people use auto grow like I do. As a backup but it does not replace proper monitoring or capacity planning.

You can see the results below Read more

The first full week in 2013 has been a a busy week for me with lots of SQL Server consulting and SQL Server writing work on. I haven’t written many blog posts so we have eaten into the scheduled posts a little bit. I like to schedule my posts a…

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#SQLSaturday194 is coming to Exeter on the 8th – 9th March.

What is SQL Saturday?  The brain child of Steve Jones, Brain Knight and  Andy Warren, the founders of sqlservercentral.com  the first event took places in the US in back October 2007 and since then has grown… Read more

Come and join me in London this March for a 3 day course on SQL Server virtualisation and consolidation.The course will start on Wednesday March 13th

Attending this SQL Server Virtualisation and Consolidation course you will learn how to:

• Implement SQL Server in a virtual environment
• Select the appropriate consolidation…

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David Postlethwaite who contributes to this blog regularly sent me an email this morning asking about Database Auto grow.

This was his question

Do you set the database and logs to grow on demand.
Advantage:       Only using expensive shared disk space as required
Disadvantage:   Causes slow database response when the… Read more

I have been doing some work on some LinkedIn groups that I manage and look after over the holidays. There have been two in particular that I have been working on.

SQL Server Contracts – I set this group up in 2009. Its purpose was connect SQL Server Professional and… Read more

I have read much about SQL Saturday’s but I have yet to attend one, that is about to change. I have read much about them but until recently these events were US based and my schedule just never allowed me to make one.

With SQL Saturday #194 taking place in… Read more