An expert roundtable discussion hosted by SQL Server Expert Kevin Kline and featuring speakers from Microsoft, EMC, Avanade, HP and Quest Software. With the release of SQL Server 2005 and its focus on Business Intelligence, SQL Server professionals are faced with unprecedented amounts of data to manage. How are you dealing with the flood of data? At the PASS Community Summit 2006, experts from Quest Software joined forces with a variety of other SQL Server industry experts for a panel discussion around the implications of managing large volumes of business critical data on SQL Server and … [Read more...]
DBTA: The Trouble with Third-Party Applications
September 28, 2010 by Leave a Comment
Third-party applications are a very important part of the IT landscape. Many of us have faced the common dilemma of trying to decide whether to build or buy that next important application our organizations need. (By the way, I'm talking about smaller, specialized applications like an inventory management system for the company warehouse, or a practice management system for a doctor's office. I'm not talking about the huge and incredibly sophisticated ERP systems like SAP and Oracle Financials.) [READ MORE] … [Read more...]
DBTA:Reaching for Highly Scalable Systems with SQL Server 2008
August 30, 2010 by Leave a Comment
SQL Server has supported VLDBs (very large databases) for some time now. Back in the SQL Server 2000 days, I recall hearing multi-terabyte databases were unusual but doable. Now, they are commonplace, while databases in the hundreds of terabytes inhabit the part of the map that says "there be dragons." While VLDBs are quite common on SQL Server today, highly scalable systems that can be flexibly extended in the same fashion as Oracle/RAC are less so. So, how do you design a highly available architecture for SQL Server if it's not like Oracle/RAC. [READ MORE] … [Read more...]
Free Poster – SQL Server Dynamic Management Views
August 29, 2010 by 2 Comments
I enjoy working at Quest Software partly because we do a lot to give back to the community. Here's one example, a free poster describing all of the SQL Server 2005 and 2008 dynamic management views. Get it here. It's the perfect compliment to the free system map poster available from Microsoft here. … [Read more...]
DBTA: Long-Term Changes Resulting from Policy-Based Management
August 23, 2010 by Leave a Comment
It doesn’t seem like it was that long ago that my company’s IT department was bracing for a major new line of work. Back in the mid 1990s, we were going full steam into client-server technology. At the same time, we were significantly expanding our workforce. The IT department that had spent years as an old-style mainframe shop, was suddenly inundated with requests for new workstations, network user IDs, new network domains, permission requests, and requests for application access privileges. Our lone mainframe permissions person quickly felt overwhelmed and a little baffled by all of these … [Read more...]
Toad for Cloud Databases Community is now live!
August 11, 2010 by Leave a Comment
Quest Software is proud to announce the launch of the Toad for Cloud Databases community site. You can also get the free Toad for Cloud product here. It's in beta, but definitely worth a try. If you've wondered what's over the horizon, I encourage you to take a look at this interview with Billy Bosworth, the head of Quest's database tools group. (Yes, he's the guy who signs my checks). We are now experiencing more disruptive technologies in the world of data than we have seen in nearly two decades. Perhaps your database is better suited for the cloud or maybe you want to investigate … [Read more...]
