DBTA: Security as an Afterthought

If you've read the IT press at all these days, you know that SQL Injection (SI) attacks are very common and can be devastatingly effective. In fact, SI attacks-equally easy to execute against Oracle, MySQL, IBM DB2, or Microsoft SQL Server-are among the most common hacks on the Internet today. If a web application runs a relational database on the backend, it can be subject to an SI attack, which ironically, is among the easiest web hacks to prevent. [READ MORE] … [Read more...]

Plays Well With Others – Metrics to the Max!

November 2009 would have been the 100th birthday of famed management guru, Peter Drucker, were he alive today.  Now for those of you who don’t know the name, Peter Drucker was no mere guru or simple pundit.  He was in fact the father of management and universally acclaimed as the world’s greatest management thinker.  Anyone who’s taken a business class, studied for an MBA, or had to deal with an IT project to build a management dashboard has been touched by Peter Drucker.  If you have a spare moment, add Drucker’s Concept of the Corporation to your library. Drucker came upon the scene at a … [Read more...]

Carol McGury Speaks Out on Not-For-Profit Governance

I'd asked my friend and a form ED of PASS to add her thoughts about the governance process for not-for-profit organizations.  Carol is one of the industry's top professionals, serving as the chief operating officer for many years at some of the largest IT and non-IT professional associations.  I always look forward to her insight.  She writes... As an Executive Director for another user group community, I can offer up a few thoughts as it relates to Nominating Committee best practices. I’ve been working with technology and various vendors for over 20 years, and I’ve seen the community … [Read more...]

Video: SQL Performance Optimization

Gain insight into best practices for SQL Server optimization and ways to alleviate many root causes that can impact performance of your SQL Server database. Kevin also will discuss how to manage for planned and unplanned changes, speed time to implementation of your applications and ensure that your databases are running as they should. You will learn how to: * Identify the root cause of bottlenecks that hinder performance of your SQL Server environment * Diagnose and fix T-SQL errors in development before code goes into production * Learn new best practices for project planning and … [Read more...]

DBTA: The Big Keep Getting Bigger

In this season of recession and financial meltdowns, a common question seems to be, "How big is ‘too big to fail'?" Titans of the financial industry made big bets with lots of risk and, when they didn't pan out, American society overall has to pay the price.  But, that aside, the very scale of our financial system, by just about every metric, has reached amazing heights, be that number of financial transactions per second, number of traders, number of funds traded, amount of money changing hands—you name it. [READ MORE] … [Read more...]

SQLRally Precon Voting

I have submitted a pre-conference session to present  at the PASS SQLRally, May 11, 2011 in Orlando, FL. My session is entitled Leadership and Team Management Skills for the Database Professional. If you've ever attended my 1-hr professional development session at the PASS Summit, which has scored highest in the professional development track, then you've seen a preview of what we'll be covering over the course of the full day. During the session I will discuss how most IT leaders earned their promotions based on technical competency, not on leadership or managerial skills. Technical … [Read more...]

Vote Now for the 2010 SQLServerPedia Awards!

As a way of recognizing and thanking it's contributors, SQLServerPedia is holding annual awards for the best blog posts syndicated on the site from November 2009 – October 2010. Editors Iain Kick (blog | twitter), Jeremiah Peschka (blog | twitter), and myself have scoured SQLServerPedia.com to find the most informative and useful posts across a wide range of categories that were posted over the last year. Please click below to cast your vote.: http://sqlserverpedia.com/awards/ Get your friends/kids/colleagues to vote too! Voting opens today (November 1st) and closes November 8th.  … [Read more...]

Plays Well With Others – Upsizing Your Skills With OCW

In our last installment , I describe the three essential skills I felt were hallmarks of the best and most successful directors that I’ve worked with.  Good directors, indeed good strategic leaders of all stripes, usually have at least one or more of these skills: strategic planning, visionary goals, and emotional intelligence. The good news about these skills, and lots of other skills that can advance your career, is that you can learn them.  Many people will spend a fortune on a classroom approach to learning these sorts of skills via an MBA.  If you’re a penny pincher, you can get a leg … [Read more...]

Videos: Strategies for Addressing Common SQL Server Challenges

As a busy SQL Server DBA you face an increasing number of daily challenges: Managing fast growing data volumes and database environments Diagnosing and resolving performance issues Effective backup and recovery Monitoring and tracking database changes Balancing current resources against future capacity needs Inefficiencies in any of these areas can lead to performance degradation, unauthorized database changes, and unplanned, extended downtime. Webcast originally presented by renowned SQL Server expert Kevin Kline and learn valuable strategies for addressing these challenges … [Read more...]

Quest Software announces Cassandra support in Toad for Cloud Databases and a partnership with Riptano.

My employer, Quest Software, Inc.  (QSFT 26.15, +0.68, +2.65%) today added Apache Cassandra, an open-source NoSQL database, to its list of supported NoSQL platforms with the second beta release of Toad(R) for Cloud Databases. Toad now supports data access and management for Apache Cassandra, Amazon SimpleDB, Microsoft Azure Table Services, Apache HBase, and any Open Database Connectivity-enabled relational database. Read the entire article here. … [Read more...]