I’ve been working on a new presentation for full text search and brushing up on some of my T-SQL operators. Part of my talk goes into the CONTAINS operator, which is one of the full text search keywords you need to know.

This operator is only used with full text… Read more

“New York City…center of the universe..” – Rent

I’m off to New York this morning for the start of the 2012 SQL in the City US Tour. It kicks off tomorrow in New York City.

As this posts, I’ve just dropped my son off at school early for a… Read more

An interesting idea. I saw this question asked after I was playing with table types a bit. “Can you move a table type between schemas?”

Suppose I had two schemas:

CREATE SCHEMA OldSchema
;
GO
CREATE SCHEMA NewSchema
;
GO

In one of them, I create a table type and… Read more

It’s important that you backup your database. The most important thing you can do. However making backups isn’t enough: you need to verify those backups are good.

A humorous short video from Grant Fritchey (b | t) and RedGate on why:

Watch the video

Ideally you verify every… Read more

This is the third year that Andy Warren and myself are hosting a networking dinner in Seattle, just before the PASS Summit. If you are new to the Summit, or just interested in meeting some new people, we hope you’ll join us on Monday, Nov 5, at Gordon Biersch,… Read more

I saw a post about a user defined table type in SQL Server and I was sure it was a typo. I kept thinking the poster meant table variable, but when I searched the term in Books Online, I was surprised to find User-Defined Table Types as an entry.

These… Read more

Last year I had the pleasure of speaking at two SQL in the City events: London and Los Angeles. It was a great time and I was hoping we’d do more events this year.

We did, with 2 events in London in July of this year and now we’re about… Read more

It’s preliminary, but the fall 2012 SQL Server Connections schedule at DevConnections is out. I’ll be speaking Tuesday, Oct 30, 2012, along with Grant Fritchey (b | t), on the SQLServerCentral track.

This is traditionally the “Microsoft day” where sessions are all presented by Microsoft, but this time… Read more

A post from Alex Maccaw, programmer at Stripe. He talks about some things he likes about the company, and overall I think there are good ideas in here. In fact, a number of them remind me of my time at IQDestination (my thoughts), and some remind me… Read more

Triggers are the types of objects in SQL Server that are easy to lose track of. There isn’t an obvious way to tell that a table has a trigger on it and since most tables don’t have triggers, this is one of the things people often miss when troubleshooting unexpected… Read more

The raw footage of all the mistakes I’ve made since the Fourth of July.

Part 1

Part 2

Read more

The Denver SQL Saturday is coming in less than two weeks, SQL Saturday #169 is our second event in Denver, and the fifth in the state and I am honored to be able to speak. I have two sessions on the schedule:

• Branding Yourself for a Dream Job
• Unstructured…

Read more

I couldn’t resist, so here goes….

Help, I need some data,
Help, not just any data,
Help, I was told you need a report, help.
When I was younger, so much smarter than today,
I never needed any query help in any way.
But now these reports are long, I’m… Read more

A few years ago I went to Seattle a few days before the PASS Summit started. I took my middle son and we spent 3 days wandering around Seattle, seeing some amazing sights. We went to the Museum of Flight and the Underground Tour, along with a few other… Read more

I’m sure some people have bigger data, but Facebook has some serious daily growth. The highlight? 500TB a day.

A day.

That’s serious data. I’ve never had a database that was a TB, must less growth by over a TB a day.

To be fair, lots of the Facebook… Read more

I once rowed in the Head of the Charles Regatta. I had the 3d seat, starboard, in a 4 man boat and it was quite exciting to come up to Boston and row down the famed Charles River. It was hard, and the river was rough, tossing waves in… Read more

I’m not a T-SQL guru. When I have something that will run often, or I have performance concerns, I’ll ask someone like Jeff Moden or Wayne Sheffield to help me write a solution.

However I have a few tricks to check things out quickly and determine what’s a better solution.… Read more