I wanted to pass along this great info from Microsoft. There are literally oodles of free resources for Visual Studio programmers. In their own words... Take Visual Studio for a Test Drive Take this powerful tool and its features for a spin by downloading a full Visual Studio 2010 trial version. Discover how Visual Studio 2010 Professional helps individual developers build, test, debug software solutions. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/206383954/direct/01/ Attend an Event Find out how you can ride the next wave of innovation ushered in by Microsoft Visual Studio 2010. Choose from full day, … [Read more...]
Visual Studio 2010 – Special Edition
Filed Under: Cool Technologies, On-Line Resources, SQLServerPedia Syndication, TCD blog post, Tips & Tricks, Video Tagged With: Best Practices, Developer, Training
Video: MVPs talk about SQL Server 2008
Video chat with Brent Ozar and SQL Server MVPs Kevin Kline, Hilary Cotter and Geoff Hiten to talk about how SQL Server 2008 addresses DBA challenges and pain points. In this webcast, we cover features like Transparent Data Encryption, spatial data, and other new things that really differentiate SQL Server 2008 from 2005. Posted December 24, 2008. … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Challenges, Conferences, Cool Technologies, Opinion, SQLServerPedia Syndication, Tips & Tricks, Video Tagged With: DBA, Developer, MVP, SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2008 R2, Video
See You in St Louis, and then London, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Stockholm, and York, UK
Good grief, there's a lot of travel in my immediate future. <sigh ... deep breath> It'll be exhausting and it'll be hard to lose so much time with the family. But if I'm able to avoid travel mishaps, it'll be fun. Meet Me In St. Louis I'll be speaking in St. Louis, MO on Tuesday, September 14th for their mid-day meeting. The details, as I have them, are: Tuesday, September 14, 2010 1-4pm Location: Microsoft St. Louis Office, Three City Place Drive, Suite 1100, St. Louis, MO … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Conferences, Databases, Presentations, Professional Development, SQL Server, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: DBA, Developer, Events, SQL Server 2008 R2, Training
DBTA: The Future of Coding for SQL Server
In a two-part article over the next two months, I'm going to address an important issue for the SQL Server community: the future direction of coding for SQL Server, as directed by Microsoft. I'll start by telling you a bit about the current situation with writing code on and for SQL Server, and, in the next installment, talk more about the ramifications brought on by the current coding environment. I'm curious if you agree with my assertions. You also have the added advantage of hindsight, since I wrote these a while ago. [READ MORE] … [Read more...]
Filed Under: DBTA, Opinion, SQLServerPedia Syndication, TCD blog post, Transact-SQL Programming, Trends Tagged With: DBTA, Developer, FutureWatch, SQL Server 2008 R2
Free Poster – SQL Server PerfMon Counters
You Needs It! You Wants It! We all know how hard troubleshooting SQL Server can be. There are tools and techniques that can make troubleshooting much easier, such as the Windows System Monitor. The only problem with SysMon, or more commonly "PerfMon", is that it takes a lot of knowledge and experience to know which objects and counters to examine. I've put together a nice poster for you covering all of the important PerfMon counters for SQL Server troubleshooting, with a little help from some of my friends: Brent Ozar, Bob Ward, Christian Bolton, and Raoul Illyes. You Can Has It Fer … [Read more...]
Filed Under: On-Line Resources, Presentations, SQL Server, SQLServerPedia Syndication, Tips & Tricks Tagged With: DBA, SQL Server 2008 R2, Tools, Training, Troubleshooting
Political Calculus – PASS Nominations
Pardon me, sir. Do I have a dog in this fight? After my term of service on the PASS board of directors ended in December of 2009, I fully intended to stay far, far out of the way. It's an intention that I've largely been able to fulfill,excluding the odd conversation with an occasional board member or committee chair looking for a little impartial advice when weighing some consideration or other. If you keep up with going's on within PASS, then you'll know that there's been some hullabaloo lately. Please reference paragraph 1 again at this point to understand that I don't really … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Challenges, Ethics, Governance, Opinion, PASS, Professional Development, SQLServerPedia Syndication, Strategies Tagged With: news analysis, Professional Development, SQLPASS
Plays Well With Others – Strong Leadership During Weak Budgets
Many pundits are predicting that as the US emerges from its worst economic contraction since the Great Depression, business will bounce back with minimal new hires. One of the primary ways that businesses grow their productivity without hiring more employees is to use information technology to automate processes that used to be done by real people. But if the economy is still weak and the organization isn’t growing, that means life actually gets harder for those of us in IT because we’re being asked to deliver great returns to the company without allowing us to hire more people to get … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Opinion, Professional Development, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: Professional Development
Free e-Books from O’Reilly
O'Reilly Media has a large collection of pdf book samplers. A complete list is here. … [Read more...]
Filed Under: On-Line Resources, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: Writing
Video: Interview – Part 5 Common Challenges
Heather Eichman interviews Kevin Kline, the former President of PASS and systems specialist for the SQL Server Business Unit at Quest Software. Posted February 08, 2008. … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Challenges, SQLServerPedia Syndication, Video
Plays Well With Others – Inaugural
Professional Development for the SQL Server Technologist This series of posts is dedicated to enhancing your soft skills. For many technologists, the day-to-day grind of work tends to keep us focused on the SQL Server part of work and causes us to overlook the Professional. While we, as technologists, spend the majority of our time honing hard, technology skills, but it’s important to remember that we are first and foremost employed to add value to the business processes of the organizations we work for. In this series I will cover a wide variety of topics, including soft skills like … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Opinion, Professional Development, SQLServerPedia Syndication, Strategies Tagged With: Plays Well With Others, Professional Development
