According to Conor Cunningham, it doesn’t.

I have heard that there are issues in the optimizer, and to be sure, there are cases where the order can matter, but for most normal queries, most inner joins, order doesn’t matter. As Conor says, it might seem that a change produces… Read more

There are some progressive companies out there, and I think they are doing some very interesting things with how they treat employees and work with them. One thing that Netflix does, and I’ve seen others do, is eliminate the tracking of vacation time. They hold people responsible for getting… Read more

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I was honored to be asked to do the keynote for SQL Saturday #28 in Baton Rouge recently. It’s taken me longer than expected to process this and upload it, but here is my keynote speech from a couple weeks ago:

Part 1: The first 14 minutes or so… Read more

I’m late, I suck, but here’s some things I started in Baton Rouge and am just now getting out.

First, I’ll add my slides to the SQL Saturday site soon. I did two presentations and the keynote, which I posted yesterday. However I know a few people want… Read more

You don’t need log backups. You don’t. They aren’t required for SQL Server to function.

The place when you don’t need log backups is when you have a database operating in the Simple recovery model. In this model, your transaction log will clear out on a regular basis, every… Read more

I went to host the Red Gate SQL Source Control webinar recently and had a snag. I downloaded the GoToWebinar software (why must I download this every time?) and when I ran it, I got an error.

First it was a FireFox, “This security certificate is invalid” and I had… Read more

At SQL Saturday #28, I was surprised to be given the speaker evaluations after my first session. One of the volunteers approached me and gave them to me, saying that I could have them and use them.

That surprises me since I think one of the things that people rarely… Read more

I read Stuart Ainsworth’s blog post this morning, and I thank Stuart for posting something. However, there’s an implication in there that I know more than I’ve posted and am withholding information. So, in the interest of transparency:

I give PASS, the organization, and the PASS Board of Directors Nominating… Read more

Well I have to say I’m surprised. It’s always hard to get a rejection, and I’m not quite sure what to think of it.

I was rejected from the slate for the 2011 PASS Board of Directors, so I won’t be running this fall in the election.

I guess I’ll… Read more

I saw a short talk from Dan Pink a few months back from this year’s TED conference. It’s very cool, and worth watching. After watching the video, I bought the book, Drive.

This book goes through some the reasons why we are motivated to do things. It looks back… Read more

According to the timeline (PDF), the PASS Nominating Committee is supposed to contact the applicants today or tomorrow and let us know if we’re on the slate. The slate should be announced on Wednesday.

I’m nervous.

I’d like to say I’m not worried, or that I think it will be… Read more

Text of my keynote from SQL Saturday #28

Welcome to SQL Saturday #28 and I'm pleased to be back in Baton Rouge. This is my second time here for the event, and it's as hot and muggy as I remember. At least this year I knew enough to bring a… Read more

I started traveling with two laptops after I had a laptop fail during a trip in 2009 the day of a presentation. I bought a netbook as an emergency, but it didn’t work well and ended up as the bedroom spare for my wife.

In it’s place, I’ve started carrying… Read more

On my way to New Orleans today where I’ll pick up a car and then drive to Baton Rouge for SQL Saturday #28 tomorrow. This is my second time heading to Baton Rouge for SQL Saturday and I’m looking forward to it.

Last year I flew in early, thinking I’d… Read more

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One of the things that I’ve often seen people do is build temp tables to hold data for each connection in a unique way. Back in older versions of SQL Server this was bad since large temp tables could lock sysobjects in tempdb and cause contention. That’s been fixed, but… Read more

Well not me. It wasn’t my design, but when I went through the entries, this was the one that caught my eye first and I thought would be great.

I think it’s nice, clean, simple, and most importantly, I think it will look good on shirts, mugs, signage. Always an… Read more

“Building an easy-to-use tool does not make an amateur more skilled at making applications and more than a $900 table saw makes a plumber better at making cabinets.” - Bill Vaughn

Bill is talking about LightSwitch, a new application development tool from Microsoft. And it’s true. Better tools help,… Read more

I almost forgot about T-SQL Tuesday this time, so I’m scrambling to get an entry done today.

This is a monthly blog party, on a central theme. This month the theme is Beach Time, from Jason Brimhall, and it’s a good one. This is the 9th T-SQL Tuesday, started… Read more