Two TechNet Radio Sessions You Don’t Want to Miss

June 20, 2012 by Leave a Comment

I was recently honored to speak on TechNet Radio in two separate sessions about BigData & Hadoop and cloud databases (specifically SQL Azure).  The show debuted on the TechNet homepage under “Today’s News” and on the TechNet Edge homepage.  In each of these shows, I did what I like to do for all the parties I attend - bring a friend.  To make my life easier, I simply reposted the verbiage that TechNet used, rather that to write my own. About the BigData/Hadoop video: Microsoft SQL Server MVP Kevin Kline and Vice President of Database Development at Quest Software Guy Harrison (blog | … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Administration, Architecture, BigData, Cloud, Databases, NoSQL, On-Line Resources, SQL Server, SQLServerPedia Syndication, TCD blog post, Video Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

New Toad for SQL Server Beta

May 21, 2012 by Leave a Comment

A new beta build of Toad for SQL Server (v5.7.0.527) is available at: http://toadforsqlserver.com/beta.jspa It's free and, afaik, doesn't have a short expiration date.  It contains popular features such as compare & sync (for database schemas, servers, and data), a full transaction log reader and DML undo feature, debugger, intellisense, auto-complete, code formatter, and a lot more.  Check it out!  (There's also a version of Toad for Cloud Databases, which gives you SQL-like capabilities against a bunch of NoSQL databases). This drop contains a couple of fixes in the areas: Database … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Cloud, Databases, NoSQL, On-Line Resources, SQL Server, TCD blog post Tagged With: , , , ,

‘Backup Completed’ is NOT an Error Message

May 18, 2012 by Leave a Comment

If you're like me, you like for things to be semantically reliable.  Huh? Said another way, I like for things to mean what they say and say what they mean.  Here are a few examples of I get annoyed by failed sematics - when a footpath is used almost entirely by cyclists, when an escalator is merely stairs, or when a restroom has a huge crowd and long lines.  (No rest to be had in that room). So you can bet that I get a little prickly when the "Error Log" is used to post messages that something completed successfully.  Really?  I came here to this error log looking for, wait for it, ... … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Administration, Databases, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: , ,

SQLMag = SQL Server Pro. Goes all-digital!

April 27, 2012 by Leave a Comment

I was recently chatting with Megan Keller, my long-time editor for the Tool Time column and Executive Editor at SQL Server Pro, DevProConnections, and SharePoint Pro. I've subscribed to SQLMag ever since it was first put to print back in the late 1990's.  (That's a pic of me, on the right, in the shirt given my by SQLMag's first publisher way back in the day).  I have many bookshelves in my office, but SQLMag consumes more than half of the shelf closest to my desk.  It's that good.  Some of my personal favorites and perpetual must-read content are the columns SQL Server Questions Answered … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Databases, On-Line Resources, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication, Tool Time Tagged With: , , , ,

New White Paper: SQL Server Extended Events and Notifications

April 25, 2012 by 2 Comments

Download the new white paper: How to Use SQL Server’s Extended Events and Notifications to Proactively Resolve Performance Issues SQL Server comes with a wide array of tools for monitoring your environment. There are logs and traces that provide information when errors occur, but these are often used passively to react to events that have already occurred.  There's PerfMon, and Profiler, and loads of Dynamic Management Views to check.  But where to look? As database administrators (DBA), we need to monitor our environments proactively and create solutions as issues arise. In this white … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Administration, Challenges, Cool Technologies, Databases, On-Line Resources, Performance, SQL Server, SQLMag, Tips & Tricks Tagged With: , , , ,

Starting this week: Dublin, Maidenhead, and London

March 19, 2012 by Leave a Comment

This might be most most overcommitted four-week period of time ever in my life.  I'm tired just thinking about it! Not only am I traveling internationally and speaking over the next few weeks, I'm also helping on two book projects, learning some new applications from Quest Software, and helping on a small Transact-SQL refactoring project. Swag on hand? I've got a special printing of 500 video training DVDs for this trip: SQL Server Training on DMVs Performance Monitor and Wait Events Plus, I'll have a few posters, stickers, and other goodies.  Come see me!   SQL Saturday … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Conferences, Databases, Presentations, Professional Development, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Dev Advice: Make a Tiny Dev Database Act Like a HUGE Prod Database

March 16, 2012 by 1 Comment

Here's an evergreen question.  It's a question that never completely goes away.  But lately, I've been getting it a few times per week.  So I thought it's time to readdress the question, which usually takes some form of the following: I can't really do effective development on my little dev laptop because our production SQL Server database is 15 gazillionbytes, way too big for my workstation.  What's a uber-nerd to do?  Well, maybe they didn't use the word "uber-nerd".  But you get my drift, right?  The production database is really, really big - unmanageably big for keeping a local copy.  … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Challenges, Cool Technologies, Databases, On-Line Resources, Performance, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication, Tips & Tricks, Tool Time, Transact-SQL Programming Tagged With: , , , ,

Accelerate OLTP with HP and Microsoft’s New High Performance Reference Architecture

March 6, 2012 by Leave a Comment

If you haven't started to read Shashank Pawar (blog), you're missing out.  Shashank is part of Microsoft Australia and has been writing some very good content lately.  Here's an example from the Reference Architecture for High Performance SQL Server: HP and Microsoft engineering teams have worked together to create a reference architecture to Accelerate Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) database workloads with a fully-flash based HP/Microsoft architecture and achieve significant performance increases, simplified database manageability, and industry leading TCO. The details come in a … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Architecture, Challenges, Cool Technologies, Databases, Hardware, IO, Performance, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: , ,

New on SQLMag Tool Time Blog – Update to FineBuild

January 9, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Recall back in January 2011 that I profiled the cool tool, FineBuild for SQL Server, which helps you configure and quickly deploy installations of SQL Server.  Not only does FineBuild help you install a new SQL Server using the settings and configuration options you desire, it goes a few steps further by ensuring that any additional programs, tools, and utilities are also installed. Ed Vassie, the creator of FineBuild, has revised and improved the tools since I last wrote about it.  Ed has naturally added a number of bug fixes and documentation improvements. Several new features... [READ … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Administration, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication, Tips & Tricks, Tool Time Tagged With: , , , ,

Must-Have Resources – SQL Server Backup & Recovery

December 8, 2011 by 1 Comment

One of the things that drives me crazy as I'm getting older is that my brain is losing the capacity to differentiate version numbers.  As I speak travel around speaking with customers and at conferences, I find my self saying things like "I can't recall if this problem was fixed in SQL Server 2000 or 2005. But you don't have to worry about that any more."  Or things like "That feature was added in SQL Server 2008 R2, eh, or was that version 6.5.  DOH!" followed by a loud slapping sound as I whap my palm into my forehead. The Internet doesn't forget either.  Recommendations that were once … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Administration, Challenges, Databases, On-Line Resources, Presentations, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication, Tips & Tricks, Video Tagged With: , , , ,
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