The family returned back from the UK last night, after traveling for something like 14 hours, plus an early morning wake up. I was up at 5am, GMT, for a 9am flight. Got to Denver around 5pm MST, and then it took a couple hours to clear customs, luggage, etc.… Read more

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Imagine my surprise when I arrived at the Red Gate offices Monday morning to find Jeff Aven at the office. I had a double take since Jeff is one of the founders of Hyperbac, and since Red Gate has SQL Backup, I’m surprised that Jeff was even allowed in the… Read more

I went to the UK SQL Server User Group in Cambridge on Wednesday. I’m not sure it’s the Cambridge group since they seem to move it around at times, but this time it was at the Red Gate offices, so I stuck around to see who showed up and how… Read more

I’m heading to our “publishing summit” today at one of the Cambridge University buildings. I’m a part of the group that brings you SQLServerCentral, Simple Talk, various books, and probably other stuff I’m not aware of. Not sure if the PInvoke site is owned by us, but… Read more

It’s getting close to that time of year when you can apply to run for the PASS Board of Directors. Each year we have 3-4 openings that need to be filled as the current board members move on. Last year there was a bit of controversy when Tim Ford applied… Read more

I was reading through the latest XML Workshop article that I have from Jacob Sebastian. It’s a fantastic series for learning little bits of XML as you go and I’ve tried to read through most of them and learn something. I’m not a big XML guy, but I am trying… Read more

Update: The problem posts have been removed from the SQLTechConsulting site.

I ran across a note from Brent Ozar (blog | Twitter) on Plagiarism, Inspiration, and John Dunleavy yesterday, having missed what looks like an interesting Twitter discussion since I’m halfway around the world from where I usually… Read more

I have been awarded the MVP award from Microsoft a few years in a row and it’s an honor, but it’s also a responsibility. One of the benefits from the award is that I get information about what is coming up in products, often under an NDA (non-disclosure agreement). That… Read more

I’m off tomorrow to the UK for a week of work at the Red Gate offices, and then a couple days of vacation. My oldest is graduating from high school this year, and as a present, we’re taking him and the rest of the family to the UK for a… Read more

We make mistakes when we publish things. It happens, and I am as guilty as some people of mistakenly putting something down on paper that isn’t correct.

Or worse in SQL Server, put something down that applies to one version, and it gets superseded. I don’t usually go back and… Read more

Amazon v Apple, both pressuring publishers on ebook concessions. It’s big business, and it could easily be good or bad for consumers.

Should we have some regulation here? Is the public better served in any way if books are limited to some retailers and not others? Deals have been… Read more

A friend pinged me the other day with a question on SQL Server storage. He works as a Windows consultant, a fairly high end Windows/Hyper-V/Exchange guy, and knows a lot. However he likes to double check his plan with an area expert, which in this case was me. It’s a… Read more

I’ve been to a few SQL Saturdays, and while most have run smoothly, I have a few comments on a couple issues I’ve seen multiple times that might help others.

Signage

In every event that I’ve attended, SQL Saturday or Tech Ed, the majority of people don’t really know the… Read more

I saw a post recently asking how to build a daily report for each instance that tracks the metrics deemed important. My response was this:

• Create small db on every instance to hold data.
• write scripts to gather metrics, separate table for each metric. Use a separate job to schedule…

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I said I was going to do it last year, and I followed through. After submitting an application to volunteer, I was picked to help on the Spotlight/Pre/Post Con committee, so I’ll be helping to pick which sessions and topics are going to be available for those sessions.

I’m looking… Read more

I saw this blog about an Accenture survey of potential car buyers. It mentions that people likely won’t buy a green car unless it is superior in every way to a gasoline only car. The blog tends to lean towards the side of someone that doesn’t like hybrids. There’s… Read more

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I think maintenance plans were a great improvement in SQL Server 2005, with a more visual designer and the ability of the DBA to chain together whatever tasks they wanted.  Service Pack 2 brought some enhancements, and a few bugs, so I’d recommend that you apply SP3 to your servers… Read more

For the handover of SQLSaturday to PASS, Rushabh Metha, President of PASS, came to the Charlotte SQL Saturday, where Andy Warren and I handed over a symbolic key. It was at the end of the keynote, and fun for us, though I’m not sure that many of the attendees thought… Read more