A curious case of a missing configuration group.

G’day,
I recently received a brand new windows 7 virtual machine for my every day work use and one of the first things...

Notes from SQLRally Orlando

Tuesday afternoon started with me being an unexpected behind schedule, and then another interruption or two, but by 4:30 pm...

SQL Rally Day 1 PreCon

Yesterday was the first day of the SQL Rally conference in Orlando, FL.It was a great first day because I...

Clean Code is Easier to Read – SQL Prompt

I saw a post recently that had query that looked like this:
select a.*,name, b.*
from sys.database_principals a, sys.database_permissions b

where permission_name...

You Are Responsible for You

Steve Jones wrote an editorial yesterday called The Poor Soul. It talked about being thrown into a responsibility one didn't...

Locking While Dropping or Altering an Index

Yesterday I was trying to drop some hypothetical indexes in production against a fairly active table. I started causing blocking...

Pragmatic Tools Week: Task Factory

If you've ever spent any time doing SSIS development work, you'll eventually come to a point when developing something and...

DBA VC Presentation May 11

Come one, come all!!  Oh wait, it’s too late now.  I just finished giving my presentation to the DBA VC (virtual chapter).  There was good attendance and there were...

DBA VC Presentation May 11

Come one, come all!!  Oh wait, it’s too late now.  I just finished giving my presentation to the DBA VC...

T-SQL: Identifying, inserting and removing spaces in strings

Frequently, when working with strings you will need to identify, insert or remove spaces before, after or in between characters.
For example, you may...