At the MVP Summit last week, I was talking with fellow Dallas-area tweep Sean McCown about our local SQL Server user group membership.  I think our group is unique because of its sheer size; we typically have between 70 and 90 people at our monthly meetings, with a mailing list… Read more

In case you don’t subscribe to the SQL Server Central daily newsletter, check out the editorial I wrote entitled “Dude, Your Fly Is Open”, a lighthearted look at when and how to point out the mistakes of others.  You can find it here: http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Editorial/69482/. Read more

A couple of weeks ago, it was announced that the SQL Saturday franchise was voluntarily transferred to PASS .  This change of ownership could be a good thing for SQL Saturday, but I do have some questions and concerns.

Let me say for starters that the SQL Saturday franchise is… Read more

I’d like to share a networking success story.  Last year, I blogged about my experience at the PASS Summit of 2005, where I was essentially a wallflower and didn’t really do any networking.  Since then, I’ve realized its importance and have embraced professional networking as a key component in… Read more

A relatively common requirement in ETL processing is to break records into disparate outputs based on an alphabetical split on a range of letters.  A practical example of this would be a work queue for collections staff based on last name; records would be pulled from a common source and… Read more