SQLBITS One of the top highlights of my year is when I get to visit the great cities of Europe and meet with the great IT professionals there. Last October, I was able to visit several cities in Europe, including my first ever stop in Stockholm and Malmo, Sweden. Last year's SQLBits event was in the lovely city of York, England. This spring, in fact the next two weeks, I'll be on a whirlwind junket. In just a few hours, I fly out to London and then drive down to Brighton for a couple days of SQLBits. SQLBits has a great lineup of speakers and content this spring. I'm looking … [Read more...]
SQLBits and Events in Dublin, Koln, and Malmo
Filed Under: Conferences, PASS, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: cloud computing, DBA, Developer, SQL Server 2008 R2, Training
SQLServerPedia Has a New Editor-in-Chief. Oh no, it’s Me!
Attrition has taken its toll once again as a few good friends move from being colleagues to being former colleagues. As a result of the folks moving on to bigger and better things, I'm now stepping up in to the roll of editor-in-chief of SQLServerPedia. This roll is mostly about checking on the quality of content produced by our syndicating bloggers to make sure that they're not trying to sell products or services and that their posts are of high quality. That's about where the official duties end, save for things like acting as a judge in big SSP contests. One new aspect that I want … [Read more...]
Filed Under: On-Line Resources, Professional Development, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication, TCD blog post Tagged With: Oracle, Plays Well With Others, SQL Server 2008 R2, SQLMag, Writing
How Do You SKU?
I’d like your opinion here. Follow my logic here for a moment as I walk through a couple rhetorical questions. Have you ever had a friend developed an application entirely on SQL Server Developer Edition? (Not that YOU would ever do such a thing, but maybe you know someone who has. Right?) And has your friend’s IT department actually deployed said application only to discover that they’re only licensed for Standard Edition in their production environment? And then was your friend’s IT management team is horrified to learn that they’ve either got to go through the very expensive process … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Databases, Opinion, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: Best Practices, DBA, SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2008 R2
How Much Data is a Lot of Data?
It's always interesting to see the guestimations of the big brains about figures and facts that are hard to verify. Here's an example - how much data is computerized today? I'm not talking about ancient stuff, like the Codex Synaticus (which, incidentally IS on-line at www.codexsinaiticus.org). I’m talking about the new and really important stuff, like the fourteen pictures that my step-daughter posted on her FaceBook account from our recent trip to Rock City. Well, IDC figured that overall digital data was up to 1.2Zb (Zetabytes!) at the end of 2010. My mind is boggling. Ok, so that's … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Databases, NoSQL, Opinion, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication, Trends Tagged With: cloud computing, DBTA, FutureWatch
Innovation and Invention: Whose Method Is Best?
There are a lot of reasons why I love The Economist magazine and pay over $100 per year for a subscription. First of all, it summarizes all of its news articles, big and small, in the first 4-5 pages of the magazine. Don't have time to read the entire issue? No problem, how does 20 minutes work for you? Second, it reports news from around the world as if the rest of the world actually matters, whereas every American news magazine I read looks at the rest of the world as an afterthought. You probably know me well enough to know that I travel internationally at least a couple times each … [Read more...]
Filed Under: On-Line Resources, Professional Development, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: Creativity, Innovation, Professional Development
Come Aboard. We’re Expecting You
Those of us over a certain age (read - old as dirt) can remember the theme songs to certain TV shows better than we can the National Anthem. Try these lines out and see if you don't immediately remember the tune that goes along with them: Come and knock on our door | We've been waiting for you ... Makin' your way in the world today | Takes everything you've got ... Just some good ol' boys | Never meaning no harm ... Thank you for being a friend | Travel down the road and back again ... So when I got the news that my employer, Quest Software, wanted to send one of the team to an … [Read more...]
Filed Under: IO, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: Best Practices, Professional Development, SQL Server 2008 R2, Training
Adventures in the Land of CloudDB/NoSQL/NoAcid
Last year, some of my friends from Quest Software attended Hadoop World in New York. In 2009, I never would've guessed that Quest would be there with products, community initiatives, as a major sponsor and with presenters? There were just under 1,000 attendees who weren’t the typical devheads and geekasaurs you'd normally see at very techie events like Code Camps, SQL Saturdays, Cloud Camps and or even other NoSQL events such as the Cassandra Summit. We're talkin' enterprise customers with active Hadoop projects underway. Some observations from the show that may be of interest to … [Read more...]
Filed Under: BigData, Cloud, Conferences, Cool Technologies, Databases, NoSQL, Opinion, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication, Strategies, TCD blog post, Trends Tagged With: Hadoop, news analysis, NoSQL, Oracle, Quest Software
Database Maintenance Scripting Done Right
I first wrote about useful database maintenance scripts on my SQLBlog account way back in 2008. Hmmm - now that I think about it, I first wrote about my own useful database maintenance scripts in a journal called SQL Server Professional back in the mid-1990's on SQL Server v6.5 or some such. But I digress... Anyway, I pointed out a couple useful sites where you could get some good scripts that would take care of preventative maintenance on your SQL Server, such as index defragmentation, updating statistics, and so forth. One of the script kits came directly from Microsoft's internal … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Administration, Challenges, Databases, On-Line Resources, Performance, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication, Tool Time Tagged With: Best Practices, DBA, Performance, SQL Server 2008 R2, Tools & Scripts
Back in Atlanta! Wed, Feb 9 2011
I always enjoy spending time with my friends from Atlanta, as well as meeting folks and making new friends. If you live in the Atlanta area, I hope you'll join me on the evening of Wednesday, February 9th, 2011. Details are at the Atlanta SQL Server user group website. It's common knowledge that I have a terrible memory for many things. However, one of the few things that my memory is usually really good at is remember names & faces (and remembering stories, but that is another story as well). It's only in the last couple years that I've gotten to know Atlanta-area folks like Aaron … [Read more...]
Filed Under: PASS, Presentations, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: DBA, Developer, Internals, Performance, Query Tuning, Transact-SQL Programming
Cloud Evolving, SQL Server Responding
Brent Ozar (blog | twitter) and I did an interview with TechTarget’s Brendan Cournoyer at last summer's Tech-Ed, which as turned into a podcast titled “Cloud efforts advance, SQL Server evolves.” The podcast covers all the major trends at the conference (like BI), virtualization features in Quest’s products (like Spotlight), Brent’s new book and MCM certification, and more. Here’s a link to hear it, appearing on 6/11/10: http://searchsqlserver.techtarget.com/podcast/Cloud-efforts-advance-SQL-Server-evolves … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Cloud, Databases, Interviews, Professional Development, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication, TCD blog post Tagged With: Azure, Career, cloud computing, DBA, Professional Development, SQL Server 2008 R2, Writing
