SQLSaturday 107 Wrap Up

SQLSaturday 107 Wrap Up

SQLSaturday 107 – Great Success I was excited to go to SQLSaturday 107 for three main reasons. For one, my SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn session was picked and I love giving that one. Secondly, Kalen Delaney (blog| @sqlqueen) was giving an all-day precon on SQL Server Execution Plans: Tuning And Management and I just had [...]

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What Have You Done For Me Lately?

What Have You Done For Me Lately?

The blog has been quiet over the Winter, so where have I been lately? Simply put: On the road with the SQL Server community! I’ve been doing a lot in the community lately, as well as having our busiest Winter ever with SQLWatchmen.  So instead of making a bunch of blog posts about what I’ve [...]

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Attitude of a DBA

Attitude of a DBA

Is a DBA just a button clicker? Can a good DBA be replaced by anyone who knows the same technical skills? ‘Supporting the business’ can be a lot more involved. What Does a DBA (Database Administrator) Do Anyway? Some people think a DBA simply Tweets, Facebooks, YouTubes and occasionally checks SQL Server logs. Others think [...]

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Denali AlwaysOn – Finally, A usable ‘mirror’!

I’ll be presenting at this months SQL Server User Group (UG) meeting of CACTUSS Central (www.cactuss.org) this upcoming Monday 9/19/2011.  The location of the presentation is here.  The abstract is below. Abstract In the past, High Availability and Disaster Recovery (HADR) had many limitations. Clustering and Mirroring are great, but the mirror/secondary database is not [...]

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User Group Meeting Location Picked

Wes Brown and I just had a very nice meeting with the folks at Experis about them sponsoring the CACTUSS User Group by offering a place to meet for the newly formed Central meeting, which I have the privilege to lead. I really like their style. Very nice people and very eager to help the [...]

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POSSE Formed

POSSE Formed

We just had our formation board meeting for POSSE (sqlposse.com). Wes, Richard and Mike K. met in person since they arrived early to the monthly user group meeting, while I was conferenced in via phone. We did set the initial executive committee in this first meeting: President – Wes Brown Secretary – Richard Heim Treasurer [...]

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SQL Rally 2011 – Awesome Event

SQL Rally 2011 – Awesome Event

SQLRally 2011 The Best SQLRally Ever! – Thomas LaRock. (twitter | blog) Overview Came prepared with a brand new twitter account and 1 follower. Spam. Hey, at least I’m popular. Don’t know how to delete them, but not sure that’s a bad thing at this point. I left the conference with about 20 followers so [...]

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Best Practices for Database Schema Design (Beginners)

Best Practices for Database Schema Design (Beginners)

In this article, we will discuss a few common design decisions when defining a Schema. We’ll focus on the planning stage. There are many opinions about what is ‘best’. Here we discuss some basic guidelines which may or may not be best for your specific needs. There are two primary ways a database is used. One is Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) and the other is [...]

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DBCC loginfo, VLFs and SQL2000 and earlier.

I was reading Paul Randall and Kimberly Tripp’s discussions about Virtual Log Files (VLFs), found here. DBCC loginfo I found that performing a log backup will cause the active VLF to ‘rotate’ to the first VLF, freeing up the rest of the VLFs for maximum shrinkage. Uh, well, you know what I mean. In SQL [...]

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