… and by government data, I mean the mountain of data recently made available by the G-Men on Data.gov.  This site contains what must be terabytes of data on every topic from environmental measurements to crime statistics, from geographical data to labor statistics.  The Obama administration has committed to greater… Read more

Like many SQL Server (and other technology) people, I utilize several social networking vehicles to stay in touch with others in the SQL community.  Some of those who don’t use Facebook and Twitter (among others) have expressed skepticism of the real value of social networking.  Does it work? Does it… Read more

We are in the early stages of planning a SQL Saturday event in the Dallas area for January or February of next year.  If you haven’t had the pleasure of attending before, SQL Saturday is a day of free training on SQL Server and related technologies.  The SQL Saturday events… Read more

I read a post on Brent Ozar’s blog last week that discussed employers’ expectations when hiring new team members.  Though the story was specific to database professionals, the same principles apply to almost any hiring situation.  The moral of Brent’s story is that when hiring, just like in real life,… Read more

I like my main laptop.  It’s big and wide and bright, with lots of power and all of the bells and whistles.  Still, it’s inconvenient to carry, it takes a while to boot up all of the software I’m running, and the battery life sucks is less than I’d hoped… Read more

I'll be presenting two sessions at the SQL Saturday event in Baton Rouge on August 1.  I'll be presenting a Beyond the Basics session on SSIS, to cover some intermediate controls such as For Each loops, Filesystem Tasks, Lookup Transformations, and Conditional Splits.  I'll also deliver my popular SSIS Scripting… Read more

Have you ever noticed unexpected gaps in sequences in IDENTITY columns?  Even though you’ve got transactions set up for your inserts and a no-deletion policy, you find that there are missing values in what should be an unbroken sequence of numbers.  The problem could be partially related to transaction… Read more