We’re sitting here in St. Pete Beach in Florida visiting some of Kimberly’s family and having some sun-kissed R&R before heading back up to Seattle on Wednesday, and I thought I’d get the next post in my sparse columns mini-series out. Before I start though, Kimberly just posted the resources for the Accidental DBA class [...]
Paul S. Randal
In Recovery...
SQL Server 2008: Sparse columns and XML COLUMN_SET
Posted on: April 28, 2008 11:05 pm
Feedback on SQL Connections?
Posted on: April 23, 2008 8:58 pm
Today’s the final day of SQL Connections proper (tomorrow is post-conference workshops). We’ve really enjoyed the conference (as usual!) and it’s been a blast answering everyone’s questions. We’ll be posting resources over the next week or so (most likely on Kimberly’s blog) and we did a video interview with our good friends Richard and Carl [...]
Conference Questions Pot-Pourri #7: How to create Agent alerts
Posted on: April 19, 2008 3:05 pm
Many times I've been asked to do a blog post about creating Agent alerts, and given that today I demo'd it as part of our Accidental DBA workshop at Connections, it seemed a good time to do the blog post too! I demo this in the context of alerting a DBA when an 823 or [...]
SQL Server 2008: Sparse Columns
Posted on: April 18, 2008 1:46 am
It’s been quite a while since I wrote a blog post on a flight but I happened to be playing with a CTP-6 VPC on the way down to Orlando and thought I’d do the first in a few posts on a cool feature of SQL Server 2008 – Sparse Columns. One problem in database schema [...]
Search Engine Q&A #18: What’s the current uptime of SQL Server?
Posted on: April 17, 2008 1:27 am
Here's a quickie just before we head off to SQL Connections in Orlando. On one of the internal MS forums was the question – how can I tell through T-SQL the last time SQL Server restarted (i.e. the current 'uptime')? The answer relies on the fact that all the background tasks that start when SQL [...]
New script: How much of the database has changed since the last full backup?
Posted on: April 8, 2008 4:49 pm
Over the weekend there was a question on one of the internal aliases at MS: how can I tell what percentage of a database has changed since the last full backup, so I can choose between a differential or full backup? No such code exists as far as I know – until now! I happened [...]
SQL Server 2008: How to get FILESTREAM and partitioning to work
Posted on: April 7, 2008 11:07 pm
Now we’re back from Iceland and I have a week to catch up with some content development before the MVP Summit next week and then SQL Connections the following week. One of the things I struggled with earlier in the year while writing a SQL Server 2008 training course for Microsoft was how to get [...]
Paul Randal awarded SQL Server MVP for 2008
Posted on: April 1, 2008 4:08 pm
(And this isn’t an April Fool…) I’m very pleased to announce that I’ve been made a SQL Server MVP for 2008. For the eight years or so before leaving the SQL team last August, I was involved a lot with the SQL Server MVPs. It’s going to be *really* interesting being on the ‘other [...]
SQLskills.com Announces Time-Setback Technology for DBAs
Posted on: April 1, 2008 8:00 am
(Redmond, WA: For immediate release worldwide) Today, in a surprise development that has stunned industry analysts, SQLskills.com announced a new technology for DBAs that will help in the never-ending battle against human-error and unforeseen disasters. The patent-pending Time-Setback technology allows DBAs of SQL Server to literally rewind time and avoid disasters before they happen. Renowned [...]
