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, Slide Decks
Filed Under: Administration, Conferences, Cool Technologies, Databases, PASS, Performance, Presentations, Professional Development, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication, Virtualization Tagged With: Career, DBA, Developer, Leadership, Plays Well With Others, Professional Development, SQL Server 2012, SQLPASS, Virtualization, VMware
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...]
Filed Under: Administration, Architecture, Conferences, Cool Technologies, Databases, PASS, Presentations, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication, Virtualization Tagged With: DBA, SQL Server 2012, SQLPASS, Virtualization
The Zombie PerfMon Counter That Never Dies! Quick Tip
The PerfMon Counters That Just Won't Die One of the things that's simultaneously great and horrible about the Internet is that once something gets posted out in the ether, it basically never goes away. (Some day, politicians will realize this. We can easily fact check their consistency). Because of longevity of content posted to the Internet, a lot of performance tuning topics become "zombies". We shoot 'em in dead, but they keep coming back! In other words, those old recommendations were a suggested best practices for long ago, for a specific version of SQL Server, but are now … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Challenges, Databases, IO, Performance, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication, Tips & Tricks Tagged With: Best Practices, DBA, Developer, DMV, Monitoring, Troubleshooting
Help Me Update the History of SQL Server
I was chatting with my buddy, Buck Woody (Twitter | Blog), about a week ago and we were discussing that it's pretty hard to put together the entire history of SQL Server. Then the thought hit me that I'd already done this, to a degree, in my book Transact-SQL Programming. This was the first Transact-SQL programming book on the market way back in the SQL Server 7.0 days and even included full coverage of both Microsoft and Sybase variants of T-SQL. The thing is, I was never able to put out a second edition due to some legal and contractual issues. So, help me catch up on the history of … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Cool Technologies, Databases, Opinion, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication, Transact-SQL Programming Tagged With: Career, DBA, Developer
Timewarp: What Is a Relational Database?
Relational?!? Move On, Geezer! Maybe you're thinking that relational databases management systems (RDBMSs), like Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle, are going the way of punched cards and rotary phones. After all, there's been a lot of hype these days in the IT media about the rise of so-called NoSQL (Not Only SQL) databases. Many new and upcoming CS and MIS graduates who like working with data might think that relational databases are, at best, soon-to-be legacy systems and, at worst, are a career dead-end. Wrong!!! It's true that all the cool-cat computing services (Amazon, Facebook, … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Architecture, BigData, Cloud, Cool Technologies, Databases, NoSQL, Opinion, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: Azure, cloud computing, DBA, Developer, NoSQL, Oracle, SQL Server 2012
Secure Your Spot at the Nashville SQL Saturday!
PASS SQL Saturdays are free 1-day training events for IT professionals interested in Microsoft SQL Server, providing a variety of high-quality technical sessions, all happen through the efforts of local volunteers. The leadership team of the local chapter of PASS here in Nashville (Facebook | LinkedIn) have worked hard to make this year's SQL Saturday a day of great training and networking. The local NashSQL leadership team includes yours truly (blog | twitter), Joe Webb (Twitter | Blog), Louis "Dr SQL" Davidson (Twitter | Blog), Christina Leo (blog | twitter), and Shelton Dickson … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Conferences, Cool Technologies, Databases, Nashville SQL Server Users Group, PASS, Presentations, Professional Development, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: Best Practices, Career, DBA, Developer, Leadership, Professional Development, SQL Server 2012, Training
Two New Slide Decks. Plus, the Week in Colorado.
I had the honor of traveling the great state of Colorado last week, speaking at the PASS chapters in Boulder, Colorado Springs, and Denver. At all three events, we had a stellar attendance and, at least in Denver, broke all the records in recent memory both in terms of overall attendance and in first-timers. Denver, in fact, was standing room only and had nearly 30 first time attendees. Great news! I also want to give a special shout-out of thanks and appreciation to Chris Shaw (Twitter | Blog) whose hard work and tenacity ensured that all of Colorado got to see me speak. From left to … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Administration, Challenges, Cool Technologies, Databases, IO, On-Line Resources, PASS, Presentations, Professional Development, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication, Tips & Tricks, Video Tagged With: Best Practices, CodePlex, DBA, Developer, Leadership, Performance, SQL Server 2012, SQLSaturday, Tools & Scripts, Troubleshooting, Video
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...]
Filed Under: Administration, Conferences, Cool Technologies, Databases, Nashville SQL Server Users Group, PASS, Presentations, Professional Development, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: DBA, Developer, Leadership, SQLPASS, SQLSaturday, Video
High-Availability White Papers and Resources for SQL Server
I was just telling the good people of Charlotte about how they (and how YOU) need to read all things by Paul Randal (blog | twitter), except for all of his cheesy romance novels like Caress and Conquer written under the nom de plum of Connie Mason. There's lots more good stuff from Paul, just not romantic. This is a 'so-last-version' whitepaper describing five common high-availability and disaster-recovery architectures deployed by customers, along with a case study of each. Although the white paper is specific to SQL Server 2008 R2 and isn't updated for AlwaysOn features, it's still … [Read more...]
Recorded Webcast Available: Extend SCOM to Optimize SQL Server Performance Management
Join me and Eric Brown, Quest Software senior product manager for SQL Server monitoring tools, as we discuss the server health-check capabilities of Systems Center Operations Manager (SCOM) in this previously recorded webcast. We delve into techniques to maximize your SCOM investment as well as ways to complement it with deeper monitoring and diagnostics. You’ll walk away from this educational session with the skills to: Take full advantage of SCOM’s value for day-to-day SQL Server monitoring Extend the capabilities of SCOM to proactively manage SQL Server performance Troubleshoot … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Administration, Challenges, Databases, SQL Server, SQLServerPedia Syndication, Video Tagged With: DBA, Monitoring, Quest Software, SCOM, SQL Server 2012, System Center, Troubleshooting, Video
