The New PASS Executive Committee of 2014

I'm sure you can understand the high level of interest I have in the internal affairs and governance of PASS.  After all, I was one of the founders of the organization way back in 1999 and was president for four years from 2003 through 2006 (fondly remembered as "the hardest fricken years of my life"). So I was keenly interested when the latest press release from PASS named the incoming PASS Executive Committee to take their seats on January 1st, 2014. The executive committee is composed of the officers of the organization, that is, directors who are empowered to sign contracts and to speak … [Read more...]

Let’s Talk Licensing and Virtualization for SQL Server

I have two new articles up on Database Trends & Applications magazine.  I'd love to get your thoughts and feedback! Welcome to the Weird, Wild World of SQL Server Licensing Not long in the past, SQL Server licensing was an easy and straightforward process. You used to take one of a few paths to get your SQL Server licenses. The first and easiest path was to buy your SQL Server license with your hardware. Want to buy a HP Proliant DL380 for a SQL Server application? Why not get your SQL Server Enterprise Edition license with it at the same time? Just pay the hardware vendor for the … [Read more...]

How To Download Free Sessions From PASS

For all members of the Professional Association for Server (PASS), are you downloading slides and videos from all sorts of great PASS events?  If not, what are you waiting for ... an invitation? Ok, here it is.  I invite you to download like a madman!  (How a madman downloads, an almost entirely virtual activity, is not the question here, ok?). For starters, there's the recent 24 Hours of PASS event.  I hope you were able to attend all of the sessions you wanted. But even if you didn't get to see any, you can see them now as long as you're a (free) member of PASS.  The session recordings … [Read more...]

PASS Summit 2012, Slide Decks

Ok, I have to admit the painful truth. I'm reliably slow to the finish line. This year, I got my slides into PASS HQ by the skin of my teeth, the weekend before the event was to begin.  Although I could say with a straight face "I uploaded my slides!".  I have to be honest that I wasn't surprised when many of my attendees said that they weren't available for download by the time my session started.  OTOH, I also have to say that I really do prefer for attendees to focus on the presentation while it's being presented and that they should grab the slides afterwards.  But that's just my personal … [Read more...]

PASS Summit 2012, Day 1

One of the most positive experiences I can have, as a former leader of the PASS organization, is when I see a neophyte become a passionate support and champion for the community. On my first day in Seattle, before the event had even begun, I was stopped several by people who'd attended their first PASS Summit last year. But this year, they were excited to tell me that they'd started user groups in their own community, spoken for the first time at a PASS event, or even helped launch a SQL Saturday event. Wow! To go from a complete newcomer in the PASS community to an active and engaged … [Read more...]

Conquer Your Fear of Virtualization with a Free Day of Training at PASS!

  Click the link above to register! Presented by my buddy, David Klee at House of Brick, one of the nations top VMWare consultancies specializing in Oracle and SQL Server deployments. David has a great write-up of this boot camp at http://www.davidklee.net/2012/10/01/virtualizing-your-business-critical-sql-servers-free-boot-camp-by-house-of-brick/. … [Read more...]

Recap – SQL Saturday 151 in Orlando

It's always a feel-good experience for me to return to SQL Saturday in Orlando, the place where SQL Saturdays  were started by Andy Warren (Twitter | Blog).  On this trip, I delivered a full-day, pre-conference seminar on Troubleshooting and Performance Tuning SQL Server.  I also delivered a session on SQL Server Internals and Architecture to a totally packed house.  For those of you who emailed me directly, here's the link for the special SQL Sentry offer. I got to attend the extended events session by Jack Corbett (Twitter | Blog), middle in the photo above.  Good stuff, Jack!  Jack … [Read more...]

Do You Have One of “the Three W’s” to Sit on a Board of Directors?

Let’s get one thing clear right off the bat – I’m not typing “Board of Directors” repeatedly throughout this blog post.  It’s just too much typing.  BoD will have to do.  Live with it. Perhaps, you’ve been paying attention to the PASS Twitter feed, read the newsletters, or otherwise stay abreast of happenings within PASS.  If you haven’t, here’s a news alert – it’s time for a new round of the PASS leadership cycle.  And since this is the season of PASS nominations, I thought it’d be an appropriate time to share some of my lessons learned about effective BoDs. Having spent over a decade … [Read more...]

Come See Me. I’ll Probably Be Just Down the Street Soon!

Even though I've recently changed jobs, I'll still be speaking at a lot of SQL events across the country and internationally.  There are still a few trips that I've yet to finalize, in particular with the fine folks in Houston, run by my friend Nancy Hidy (blog | twitter), and my friends in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, run by my friend Mark Ginnebaugh (blog | twitter).  Also, do to some missed deadlines, it looks like I won't be speaking at the Nordic SQL Rally this fall. My bad!  On the other hand, you can see when checking my roster, that I hardly have time to catch my breath with this … [Read more...]

SQL Server Performance Tuning and Optimization in Jacksonville, FL on April 27th

One last reminder -  If you're interested in learning more about troubleshooting and optimizing SQL Server performance, please consider coming to the full-day seminar I'll be giving this Friday.  Full details are here: http://sqlperftuning.eventbrite.com/.  We'll be working some exercises, so bring your laptop with an instance of SQL Server 2008 (or later) running on it.  It'll be fun! I also encourage you to come on down to SQL Saturday 130  the following day - whether there's an official registration for you or not.  (But don't tell 'em I said that).  :^) Come by the booth for a visit. … [Read more...]