It's Dangerous to ISNUMERIC, Take This Try_Convert

There's an issue with some characters in T-SQL when validating numeric values out of raw varchar fields, and it can...

Upcoming Special Events for the Baton Rouge SQL Server User Groups

I'm happy to announce a big slate of upcoming events for Baton Rouge User Groups and especially the SQL Server...

Speaker Idol Competition at the Hammond .NET User Group

Here's the link to download the sample scripts and meme-tastic slidedeck from my presentation "SQL Server Indexes in Your Ill-Begotten...

Potential Backup Software Issues with Read-Only Databases in FULL Recovery

If you decide to park a database in read-only mode for a long period of time, go ahead and alter...

PowerShell: Delete Unneeded Rows/Columns In Excel

I had a project to automate the import of a large number of excel files via SSIS into SQL 2012....

SQL Saturday #255 Dallas 2013 - SQL Server Permissions and Security Principals

500+ IT pros at UT-Arlington this weekend for SQL Saturday #255 Dallas!

Notes from today:

A big shout-out to SQLSat Dallas organizer...

SQL Server Configuration Manager (sqlserverManager11.msc) Hidden after Windows 8.1 Upgrade

You may have noticed, like I did, that after upgrading-in-place from Windows 8 Enterprise to Windows 8.1 Enterprise, my local...

"SQL Server: Bolts to Buzzwords" presentation for the Hammond .NET User Group at Southeastern Louisiana University

One of my favorite groups to speak for (aside from the Baton Rouge SQL Server User Group) is the Hammond...

Houston Tech Fest 2013 - SQL Admin Best Practices with DMV's

Here is the downloadable file with all my sample scripts and slidedeck from my SQL Admin Best Practices with DMV's presentation from...

Actual Emails: TL;DR: Stop using varchar(max)

Wrote this email recently to a crew of developers who were shooting themselves in the foot with a database rich...