Steve Jones has attended the PASS Summit annually, and found value. But for this Friday's poll, did you find value this week? Or have you in the past? Let others know.  Read more...

Day 2 at the PASS Summit provides some inspiration for Steve Jones at the Women in Technology luncheon.  Read more...

Steve Jones talks a little about day one of the PASS Summit in 2009. A day of news, announcements, and briefings.  Read more...

Encryption is starting to become a necessity, not an option as we work with and store more sensitive data. A guest editorial from Andy Warren comments on our fears of implementing encrpytion and why we might want to just encrypt everything.  Read more...

One of the very common things that is needed in SQL Server is performing a restore of a database. It's also one of the most important things that needs to take place. So why isn't this a simpler process? Steve Jones wonders why we can't make this a simpler process.  Read more...

The next time you are tempted to hammer a performance problem with hardware, why not instead invest that time in hammering and refining your SQL queries? There are rich rewards to be had.  Read more...

A guest editorial for Halloween from Wayne West.  Read more...

It's another holiday and time for another blooper reel from the past month. Happy Halloween from SQLServerCentral.  Read more...

Sharepoint is a product that many IT people despise, but it's a popular seller for Microsoft. Steve Jones thinks that Sharepoint's growth is a good thing for DBAs as well.  Read more...

Today we have a guest editorial from Rodney Landrum. Rodney and his team of DBAs manage 110 active servers, throughout a regionally dispersed organization. How many DBAs would you expect to be on Rodney's team...?  Read more...

An open letter asks Google to change their default protocol to be more secure. Are there things that we might want to do inside SQL Server to make it more secure by default? Any low hanging fruit that would help the platform?  Read more...

The DBA news of the week contains some interesting thoughts on DR and virtualization plans. Steve Jones comments on why you should care about these topics.  Read more...

What type of previous experience makes a good DBA? Is it necessary to have other experience? Steve Jones asks the question in today's Friday poll.  Read more...

With the election of the Board of Directors complete for 2009, Steve Jones takes a step back to examine what we might want from a professional organization. If you care about having an organization for SQL Server professionals, read this and let us know if you agree or disagree.  Read more...

Businesses are always looking to collect data on their customers. However when they are fgiven this data, there is a level of trust from the consumer that is expected of the business. Guest editor John Magnabosco talks about the need for database professionals to take care that we are honoring this trust.   Read more...

Steve Jones has attended a lot of conferences, including one recently in Austin. With the PASS Summit and SQL Connections coming up soon, he shares some reasons why a conference can be a great way to spend your training money.  Read more...

Microsoft is very willing to lend its ear to new feature requests, but sometimes forgets to finish off the ones we've got.  Read more...

A new feature is available on SQLServerCentral, and Steve Jones talks a little about how it fits in with your strategy here at the site. Visit ask.sqlservercentral.com and let us know what you think.  Read more...

Feel like making a prediction this Friday? Steve Jones looks to the future with information workers and a knowledge economy. Answer this Friday poll and give us your guess about the future.  Read more...

Is it hard for technology workers to ask for help? Or accept it? We seem to often be the type of people that want to solve problems and fix things on our own. Is that a problem? Steve Jones thinks that we should sometimes put aside our pride and get things done.  Read more...

During a "difficult period", a developer often sinks from view. When things are going well, suddenly they are the gunslinger, the hotshot. The DBA often looks on wistfully. For him, the "fame trajectory" seems to work in reverse.  Read more...

Continuing on with a "Week in the Clouds", today Steve Jones discusses some of the challenges of cloud computing.  Read more...

As the number of different software/technologies increases exponentially, does specializing limit an IT professional's ability to move around? This editorial is being republished due to technical issues from last week.  Read more...