I’m gearing up for my first SQLskills Immersion Event of the year, Immersion Event for Developers (IEDEV) in Tampa on Feb 17-21. This one is getting kind of jam-packed with material because, in addition to coverage of T-SQL and its associated topics like query and procedural code performance and transactions and locking, this event will […]

I was about to add a new blog entry, (coming soon) and realized that it’s been *months* since I blogged last, I’ve been rather busy lately, moving house after 15 years, and doing quite a bit of traveling (quite a bit for *me*, anyway) lately. I don’t think I’ve gone a month without a blog […]

I’m happy to announce that I’ll be in Stockholm Mar 12-13 as a speaker in AddSkills’ Expertseminarium program. I’ll be doing 2 days full of SQL Server query optimization and internals information, troubleshooting, and analysis techniques. We’ll be diving into SQL Server using tools like Extended Events to get a good look into what’s going […]

Lucky me, I’ll be speaking at DevWeek in London again this year. The festivities start off with pre-cons on March 4, I’ll do a whole day on writing best-performing T-SQL and application code. After that, I’ll be doing breakout talks on a variety of topics, from SQL Server Extended Events, to Data Movement in Windows Azure […]

Returned from SQLServerDays in Belgium last week. Had a wonderful time, hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Thanks! Samples/demos are posted on SQLskills website in the "Resources" section. Enjoy! I've been rather remiss on my blogging lately, but I've acquired some interesting things to blog about in the interim and should be starting up […]

I'm honored to be invited to speak at SQLServerDays, Nov 19-20, in Schelle Belgium, just outside of Antwerp. I've been to Belgium before, but this is my first time in Antwerp and I'm really looking forward to it. I'll be doing a day-long precon on Nov 19 on New Features in SQL Server 2012. And […]

The demos from my TechEd talks in Orlando and in Amsterdam are posted on the SQLskills website under Resources. Sorry for the delay. TechEd Amsterdam isn't near finished yet tho', and I'll be at the Ask-The-Experts tomorrow and at one of the Windows Azure SQL Database booths on Friday morning. If you're around, stop by and […]

SQL Server Immersion Events are coming up in August. I deal with two different groups of people, developers and DBAs, on a variety of topics. When it comes to the specialized SQL Server topics (like SQLCLR, SQLXML, Service Broker, etc), I though that it would be best to address the seperate groups, each with a different […]

As I'm getting ready for my week-long SQLskills Immersion Event in Chicago next week, I got word that the demos from my events in Europe in late March/early April have been posted on the Resources part of the SQLskills website. I got to catch up with a lot of old friends and make a lot […]

Thanks to all the folks who attended my sessions at DevWeek, SQLBits, and SQL Saturday Dublin. Hope that you enjoyed the sessions. It was really nice to meet up with old friends and also to make new ones. As promised, the demos will be posted on the SQLskills website, but it may be a week […]

Starting the middle of next week I'm about to embark on a series of speaking/teaching engagements in Europe. Although I've mentioned some of these before, and some of these are already sold out, it bears mentioning again. If you've read my "content" (books, blog posts, whitepapers, articles) in the past, and even if you haven't, […]

Just confirmed that I'll be speaking at TechDays 2012 NL in Den Haag. I'll be speaking on Feb 16th and 17th, and I'm really looking forward to it. I'll be doing some talks on SQL Server 2012 and SQL Azure Database features including T-SQL improvements, filetable/filestream, SQL Azure Federations, and others. It will be nice to catch […]

I've had the good fortune to be invited back to Stockholm as part of Addskills Expertseminarium Series. This seminar, An In-Depth Look at Developer Features and Performance in SQL Server 2012, will be two days of studying performance, diagnostic tools and other features on Microsoft's latest release of SQL Server. We'll look at T-SQL coding improvements, […]

Just back from a small hiatus and getting my schedule together for the first half of the year. One thing I'm really looking forward to is the two public SQLskills Immersion Events for developers. These are week-long events taught specifically for developers, but that doesn't mean I'm doing shallow coverage by any means. One of […]

Got to take some time out from research and writing because yesterday Paul Randal announced SQLskills' first series of SQL Server Immersion training classes for Spring of 2012 in Chicago. They'll be 4 (count 'em) immersion-level class for DBAs, Database Developers, and Business Intelligence Specialists in a two-week stretch. Time to bring your career potential up a […]

After talking with folks about the SQLskills DBA Immersion training, one thing that always comes up is the fact that database developers feel left out. Well, you're left out no more! SQLskills is going to be doing a week-long SQL Server Developer Immersion Event (given by yours truly, of course) starting this fall. Although I've […]

You may have wondered what happened to the technical blog entries lately. Since January (and actually including January) its been constant traveling. In the month of March, this included conferences/seminars in Stockholm, London, Redmond, and Orlando. It's always nice to meet up with old friends and make new ones at these events. But its not […]

Just realized that there's less than a week until my precon on SQL Server stored procedure and application performance at DevWeek 2011 in London. It's been quite a while since I've been speaking in the London area, and I'm looking forward to meeting up with a lot of old friends and some new ones. Come join […]

Next week I'm heading to Stockholm, Sweden to present a two-day seminar next Thursday and Friday  (March 10-11) on "Writing High Performance SQL Server Database and Data Access Code", sponsored by Addskills as part of their Expertseminarium program. It's the first time that I've been to Stockholm, and I'm looking forward to seeing the city […]

I'll be making my first trip to sunny Stockholm, Sweden in March, to do a two-day seminar on 10-11 March, as part of Addskills' Expertseminarium series. I'll be demonstrating coding for performance from T-SQL stored procedures to client APIs to (when and when not to) use SQLCLR and more. I'll even present a look at […]

Some intersting things happened in the SQL Server certification space while I was away. Joe Sack announced A New Path to Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server 2008. And at the same time released some content that we (SQLskills) recorded for the new program. Coming to Redmond for obligatory MCM training is no longer required, and the […]

Last week I wrote about presenting at SQLConnections, but forgot that the week immediately afterwards is TechEd Europe in Berlin. So…another chance for shameless self-promotion (and event promotion). I'll be doing two talks at TechEd, both about fairly controversial subjects. The first, "LINQ vs Stored Procedures" draws controversy wherever I go… but I will at […]

It's just about another month until this fall's SQL Server Connections conference on Nov 1-4 in Las Vegas. I thought I'd give some background as to what I'd be covering in my precon: "Day of Scripting: Plumbing The Depths of SQL Server / PowerShell Integration". I've been speaking on PowerShell and SQL Server ever since […]

This happened about a month ago. I'd meant to post earlier, but got busy… My old friends (well, the friendships are old, I'm actually the only geezer among them) at Pluralsight asked me if I had time to record some SQL Server material for their Pluralsight-on-Demand program. And so last month, they released my SQL […]

After a fairly quiet first half of the summer, I've done quite a bit of traveling lately. But, as Joe Celko or someone once said, "There's no place like home". This week I'm at home, and pleased to be presenting at the Portland SQL Server User Group meeting on Thursday. The topic is one of my […]

Last week I was at TechEd in New Orleans, presenting, manning the SQL Server Security and Managability station, meeting with friends and business associates, and, of course, partying. The heat and humidity took a little getting used to, but otherwise it was a great time. Thanks to everyone who attended the sessions; the demos are […]

I had a great time at SQLConnections last week, and got to talk to a lot of the attendees and speakers during lunches and breaks. It was interesting talking about some controversial topics (like Entity Framework/TSQL or the Data Tier Application) and I hope folks got enough information to make up their own mind. And I hope […]

No, the secret word for tonight is not "mudshark", although it does begin with the letter M. It's modeling. SQL Server data can be modeled in a variety of ways and, after the last few weeks, there's even more. When I think of relational database modeling, I think of the IDEF1X language and visual modeling […]

I had a great time at TechEd Europe in Berlin last week. Spent a lot of time in the SQL Server booth, meeting, greeting, and answering questions. It was nice to see you'all again. Monday evening I had the occasion to be a part of the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall's falling. Wednesday night, […]

Last night (here in Europe) I started to receive notices about SQL Server 2008 R2 CTP3 being available for MSDN/Technet customers. Among the list of nice features (especially surrounding PowerPivot and SSRS see Teo's nice summary here) is the first release of SQL Server Master Data Services. I'm especially interested in the fuzzy matching and data […]

I've been remiss, October 2009 was the first month with no blog entries in a long while. I'm been heads down, working on some projects that will come to fruition soon. And there's also the freak "leaf recycle bin accident" that's left be on my back for most of last week. But this week…I'm traveling. […]

I've found out that a few of my talks have been accepted for TechEd 2009 Europe, which will take place this year in Berlin, Germany, on Nov 9-13. I'll be doing some SQL Server performance-related talks. If you're in Berlin, stop by and say hi, it will be nice to see everybody again.

I'm speaking at the Portland SQL Server User Group meeting this month about What's New in the SQL Server World. I'll be talking about upcoming new features in SQL Server 2008 R2 and upcoming features and products (like SQL Server Azure and Entity Framework 4.0) that could affect the way that you work with SQL […]

Went through 2 years worth of blog entries looking for comments to approve. Sorry that I've been remiss in doing that. I have to approve every comment "by hand" and we'd been getting a lot of spam comments, so I've been putting it off. I'll approve anything that doesn't look like spam so if you […]

The latest "chain letter" type topic to wend it's way through the blogsphere is "things you now know" and I've been tagged. Here's some things that I now "know" (or opinions I now have) that I wished I'd known earlier in life. I present them without explanation because after all, they're opinions. In general, software […]

I was browsing through MSDN magazine (the paper version) today and noticed an ad for the upcoming SQLConnections conference in Orlando. I'm doing three sessions there as well as a day-long pre-conference talk "All about SQL Server 2008 Spatial Data and writing Location-aware Applications". I'm REALLY looking forward to this one and have some interesting […]

If you seem to be getting tons of my old blog entries, it's because I've gone back through all of them and added categories. All the way to 2004. This doesn't produce updates/duplicates for my blog reader, but it may produce them for yours. Available categories are listed for easy search. I still get questions […]

For those folks who wrote comments on the blog posts and wondered why they do not appear…. they should appear now. When our new blogging software was installed (about 3 months ago or so), a new requirement appeared….I must personally *approve* (or delete) each comment; freshly posted comments will not appear. So, I'm going back to […]

End of the conference season 2008. At least for me, my friends in Belgium are looking forward to their SQL Server Day, coming up soon. I was able to catch up with a lot of friends at TechEd EMEA ITForum, TechEd EMEA for Developers, and SQLPASS, including some folks I hadn't seen in years. Just […]

I’m up early this morning for a repeat of my T-SQL in SQL Server 2008 talk. Things really went well for the last two days, folks really seemed to like to see lots of actual working code, albeit my examples are always “minimalist”. There was a lot of interest around the Spatial data talk and […]

Today is day 1 of TechEd/ITForum in Barcelona. I have a bit less hectic of a workload at this one, a total of 4 sessions, 3 of them being “interactive sessions” (this year’s word for chalktalk). Today’s session is going to be on T-SQL enhancements in SQL Server 2008, at the late-in-the-day time of 5:45-7:00pm. […]

Whew! I had a full week at TechEd Barcelona, just getting around to finishing up writing about it. It was great to get out and see everyone, there were a lot of familiar faces. Thanks for showing up and saying hello. I fully enjoyed each and every presentation and interactive discussion. A special thank you […]

Today, I’m finishing up my (many) talks at TechEd/Developers’ Barcelona with a breakout on best practices for transactions and isolation and leading an interactive discussion on OLE DB and ODBC. I love talking about transactions and, in addition to demonstrating all of the isolation levels SQL Server supports their behavior and repercussions, I’ll even show […]

Tomorrow (Wednesday) I’m changing to multiple best practices session in a single day. In the morning, I’ll be speaking about T-SQL query plans and “why queries run slowly” in a session called “Best Practices for Procedural SQL Code”. And in the afternoon, a different data model and query language (but the same optimizer) in “Best […]

Today is day of SQLCLR (that is, use of .NET CLR code in SQL Server) for me at TechEd/Developers in Barcelona. I’m doing two talks on it: one before and one after lunch. The before lunch talk is a breakout-style talk, illustrating with code when its a good idea to use SQLCLR and when its […]

This week I’m at TechEd/Developers Barcelona. I arrived Saturday and I’m always delighted, being a Portland Oregon resident, to see the sun, even in winter. It’s supposed to be sunny and mid-upper 60s for the next 10 days and that’s good because I’ll be staying on for TechEd/ITForum next week too. Oh boy, my sun […]

11:00AM: I’m sitting in the lounge room at TechEd Hong Kong, getting ready to do my first talk on SQL Server. It’s an interesting setup that we have this year, the wireless hub is located next to an area of booths. Lots of interaction (I think) between vendors, attendees, and speakers. The preconference talk on […]

Now that Kim and Paul have each posted about it and even published some pictures, I guess its time for me to send out a heartfelt CONGRATULATIONS to them both on the occasion of their recent wedding last weekend. All the best in your upcoming life together! In a seperate/related announcement, Paul announced that he’ll be joining […]

When I’m not busy writing about SQL Server, I quite enjoy reading books about it that look at things from a different point of view. I’ve been catching up on my reading lately, but getting behind on my book reviews. So here’s a few reviews I’d been meaning to write for some time. The authors […]

In just over a month, I’ll be at TechEd 2007 Hong Kong. I’ll be delivering a preconference talk on (what else) SQL Server 2005 and a number of breakout sessions. Check the SQLskills Upcoming Events for more information. The folks in Hong Kong always put on an excellent show, and I’m very much looking forward to it. In […]

I’ll be doing a one-day workshop on SQL Server 2005 in Amsterdam in June, as a postconference event of Microsoft DevDays. Although I’ve done quite a few events on SQL Server 2005 before, this one will be quite a bit different from any that I’ve done before. It deals with best practices. It’s been about 4-5 […]

I’ll be at TechEd 2007 in Orlando next month doing a breakout session on SQL Server 2005 scaleout technologies, as well as a couple of chalktalks (on eventing and WMI and on Powershell and SMO) in the SQL Server area. Stop by and say hi. And…if you’re thinking of going to a pre-conference talk, Kimberly […]

I always look through the SQL Server 2005 samples with each new incantation, and always seem to find things in there that are new and interesting. In the SP2 version, the samples included a new sample database, “AdventureWorks Light”. Also known as AdventureWorksLT. Because folks that teach SQL Server do have a bunch of canned […]

I just returned from Microsoft Developer and ITPro days in Ghent, Belgium. The hospitality was great, and the event itself drew some big crowds of top notch developers and IT pros. Ghent was an amazing city, with medieval architecture sharing the city with modern buildings. Besides the four talks on SQL Server 2005 and ADO.NET […]

Next week (28-29 Mar) I’ll be doing some talks on SQL Server 2005 and ADO.NET vNext at DevDays Belgium in Ghent. On 28 Mar, I’ll also be doing a special additional talk on SQL Server 2005 Event Notifications (including a cross-database notification demo) for the Belgian SQL Server user group at the event. If you’re a registered member […]

Next month I’m looking forward to speaking at DevDays in Ghent Belgium on SQL Server 2005 and on ADO.NET vNext. The conference is being held on 27-29 Mar, but most (all) of my talks will be on Thursday, the 29th. On Wednesday at noon, I’ll be doing a book signing at the A/W booth. If you’re around at DevDays […]

Peter DeBetta recently tagged me in what is called “blog tag”. When I described it to Mary, she named it “blog chain letter” and said I should ignore it. But it got me thinking. Although I run my mouth often and have some fairly weird stories, here’s 5 things you may not know about me. […]

The SQL Server 2005 Integration Services team has posted a draft of my SSIS Connectivity Whitepaper on their connectivity wiki at http://ssis.wik.is (note the change in the address of the wiki site). It addresses the details of using OLE DB, ADO.NET, and others with SSIS and the database/data source of your choice. Check it out. If you’ve […]

I’m at ITForum in Barcelona, day 2. I’ve got the 17:00 talk and its on Troubleshooting Service Broker. It’s warm and sunny outside, especially for November, and I’ll need to think up something extrordinary to keep people inside and at the talk. How about having Service Broker make the sun shine inside programmatically..you can do […]

I’m at ITForum in Barcelona this week. I’ll be speaking on three topics that are: 1. Completely or almost completely new in SQL Server 20052. Take some DBAs a bit out of their comfort zone If you’ve been avoiding these features until now, its time to take the plunge and let these features help you, […]

Haven’t written in a while. I’ve been back from Hong Kong for a few weeks (had a fantastic time, thanks folks), and, a few days later, contracted the (American) flu that’s been going around here. Just getting over it. Also, I’ve been busy working on some whitepapers that will come out (relatively) soon. I’ll announce […]

Thanks to those who came to my webcast today on SQL Server 2005. Between this webcast and the other upgrading webcasts that are available on the Technet event website and the MSDN event website, you should have a pretty good idea about why you need to upgrade to SQL Server 2005. If you haven’t done […]

I’ve been honing my slides and polishing up my demos for TechEd 2006 Hong Kong at the end of September. I’ll be doing some breakouts there on SQL Server 2005 and ADO.NET vNext, but there will also be a “Day of SQL Server 2005 for Developers”, as a preconference presentation. There’s so much that’s new […]

You’ve read the specs. Now get the bits. Here. Note that “vNext” isn’t V3.0, which doesn’t include these new ADO.NET items. vNext is the release after V3.0. Maybe V4?

I got email today notifying me that Dan Sullivan and my new book on SQL Server, “A Programmer’s Guide to SQL Server 2005” is on sale on Bookpol.com at a deep discount for a limited time only. Check out http://www.bookpool.com/ct/214. I just did and, geez, its better than my *author* discount when I buy ’em direct […]

Sometimes I’ll have these interesting juxtapositions of two or more projects I’m working on at the same time. So what does Joe Celko have to do with the Visual Studio “Data Dude” (VSTSDD for short, I don’t know what the official acronym is yet) product? Well… The first time I generated test data with VSTSDD, […]

We had some very talented technical reviewers for our “Programmer’s Guide to SQL Server 2005” book. Some of them, like Greg Low and Roger Wolter, are well known in the blogging community. I was happy to see that John Huschka and Jens Süßmeyer are both blogging. Jens has been blogging for a few months and […]

If you hadn’t noticed, I’ve stopped taking comments and trackbacks for a while. I figured if you’all like video poker, you know where to find it. I’ll try and put them back soon, because you and I lose the valuable feedback along with the valueless drivel. For example… I’d mentioned in yesterday’s blog entry about scale […]

Reading some papers on scale-out, I came across this in the SQL Server 2000 resource kit: “Scaling up is the first approach you should consider, … scaling out should be the final consideration.” Other papers mention “in order to best implement a scale-up architecture, it has to be planned in advance.” and “it is easier […]

At TechEd, a couple of folks came up to me and asked “we see around at conferences and read your blog, but when are you going to offer any…ahem… *public* classes, already?” I see you were a “special guest” at a training event back in March, but we couldn’t afford to go to Amsterdam. Well…SQLskills […]

It was a fine time at TechEd. I enjoyed catching up with a lot of old friends and making some new friends. Thanks to all of you who dropped by my chalktalks or attended my error handling breakout session. It was fun hanging around the Data/SQL Server area and talking with all the folks who came by. Thanks […]

It’s raining here today, starting to feel like home. Many thanks to the folks that told me they had an excellent time delving into error handling in SQL Server 2005 server and clients during yesterday’s talk. The demos are already posted on the SQLskills website; look under “Current Events” for the link. Today’s talk (to a […]

My talk on error handling in SQL Server and clients starts in another hour. Error handling in SQL has been more of an art than a science in previous versions, and some folks just pass every error back to the client directly. With TRY-CATCH in Transact-SQL you don’t have to do “passthrough” error handling now, […]

If you haven’t already seen the good news on our website, SQLskills welcomes Elizebeth Vitt. Elizebeth is well-known in the business intelligence community and will be our Director of Business Intelligence Skills. We’re looking forward to even more synergy among members of the organization; Business Intelligence may be the most earthshattering part of SQL Server […]

The week before TechEd, everyone’s reminded to blog about what they’ll be up to, to draw folks to sessions. The sheer number of presentations and topics this year, including breakouts, chalktalks, BOFs is overwhelming. The show is sold out, but some of the talks are being “simulcast” as well. So I’ll be there talking about […]

Although I’m away from home this week (teaching in Hyderabad) I’ve heard that the first advance copies of Dan Sullivan’s and my new SQL Server 2005 book, A Developer’s Guide to SQL Server 2005, have made their appearence. Earlier than expected. Although we RTM’d before SP1, printing takes about 3 weeks and the service pack […]

As you can see, I’m trying to catch up on my blogging. Here’s one I missed. I’ll be at TechEd 2006 in Boston in June. It will be good to return to the location of my first-ever data processing job (yes, it was called data processing then, in the year 1977. and no, I’d don’t […]

Since we were on a roll the SQL Server 2005 discussion, Richard and Carl had me back this week on dnr-TV. It’s a combination of podcasting and demonstrations using Visual Studio, and I obliged with an hour demonstration of using SQLCLR with Visual Studio. I also talk about some of the things to watch out […]

I had the good fortune to be able to spend an hour or so (may have been a bit longer 😉 chatting with Richard and Carl last week on .NET Rocks! about SQL Server 2005 and the state of the world in general. This episode should be available on Tuesday, Apr 18 at the usual […]

Well, not at my house… but at the Portland (Oregon) SQL Server Users Group meeting. I’ll have to admit that I’ve not attended many meetings of the users group (OK, I’ve not attended a meeting in a long time) but its because I’ve not been at home on a day that corresponded to a meeting […]

I’m writing this just before the start of the Dutch Devdays conference in Amsterdam. The conference promises to a good one, with local speakers as well as guest speakers. I’m going to be presenting four  different in-depth topics, all related to database client applications and/or SQL Server 2005 applications, and how ADO.NET 2.0 and SQL […]

I’ve been confirmed to present some talks at DevDays Netherlands on March 7-8. I’ll be talking about my favorite subjects, SQL Server 2005 and ADO.NET 2.0. It will be good to catch up with the folks from Class-A. Anko, Astrid, and Alex will also be presenting. I’m trying to line up some advance copies of […]

I’ve been getting some mail messages that the sample chapter of our latest book that we uploaded on the SQLskills website is not readable. Or in some cases, not downloadable. The error messages indicate that you need the latest version of Acrobat Reader (downloadable from Adobe) to read the chapter. The “not downloadable” message may be […]

Dan and I have been permitted to post a sample draft-quality chapter and the table of contents our upcoming book, “SQL Server 2005 Developer’s Guide”. They’re available on the SQLskills website as links from the Resources/Books menu entry on the homepage. The sample chapter discusses using the SqlClient data provider in SQL Server procedural code. Feedback […]

With apologies to Johnny Winter. Long time, no postings. You might have guessed why I disappeared, but Dan and I just finished and handed in the sequel (pun intended) to the “First Look” book, entitled “A Developer’s Guide to SQL Server 2005”. How I spent my winter “vacation”… Whew. We’ve got everything updated to RTM, LOTS […]

After reading my last blog entry, Wally McClure points out that I did indeed meet him once. In July 2001, on Redmond campus. Amazing. And of course, now I *do* remember it, it was a .NET (1.0) authors summit. I think. He looked just like his picture. 😉 Sorry…more technical content coming soon.

The podcast I did with Wally McClure is up on his website. Here’s the link to it. I did this podcast about a month ago, so some of the musings might be old news, but Wally wanted to time the podcast’s release with the release of SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005. So it’s […]

A couple of hours after checking into my hotel on the Hong Kong waterfront, fireworks started going off outside…the real kind. Turns out I’d arrived on China National Day and the streets outside were closed because crowds had gathered to watch the fireworks display at the harbour. 56th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China. […]

Made a quick exit from SQLPass in Dallas, hopped on a plane, and 4 planes later (plus a stop at home to get things together) I’m in Hong Kong. I enjoyed SQLPass immensely and by the sounds of it, so did the folks that were in my two-day long pre-con on SQL Server 2005 for […]

I’m here at SQLPass conference in Texas, the preconference doesn’t look like it will be “rained out” as my was last year. I came in yesterday in the early evening. There was a little wind on the flight in but nothing major; the plane even arrived on schedule. I look forward to seeing everyone there. If you won’t […]

As a blog reader as well as blog writer, I’m disturbed by a trend that seems to be more commonplace lately, the “continued here” trend. I’ll bet you’ve seen it too. The blog entry is comprised of two sentences or so (or even worse, just a teaser line) followed by “continued here” (or “more at” […]

That’s the question that folks ask a lot lately. See you at PDC? It’s not that I wouldn’t *like* to go. It’s that there’s another 3-letter acronym in my life that week, OSF. No, that’s not the Open Software Foundation, it’s the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Mary and I will be making our twice-yearly trek to Ashland to see […]

I’ve heard this around quite a bit lately, but I attend some conferences and follow a lot of newsgroups. If you haven’t heard: Database Mail (was also called SQLimail I beleive) the new SMTP mail service in SQL Server 2005 uses Service Broker as the underlying infrastructure. One of the reasons why is: scalibility – […]

About how they work together. The panel is being held as a webcast, and they’ll be some slides too. This is all taking place on September 22, and they’ll be two separate iterations. If you’ve even wondered what the point of using the exactly coordinated CTPs together was (and whined about it), come and attend this panel […]

I received email today that it was OK to talk about this. Our book “A First Look At SQL Server 2005 For Developers” was selected as “Best SQL Server Book” by the readers of SQL Server Magazine. You can read a short blurb about it here. And if you’re a subscriber, you can read the […]

I’ve spent the last few days talking with the data access folks at Microsoft. They’re working on the next set of features and I’ve given input based on feedback I got from clients and students in the past two years. There may be some things I forgot about, however. If you have an ADO.NET feature […]

Another fantastic book for your reading pleasure this month. “Customizing The Microsoft .NET Framework Common Language Runtime” by Steven Pratschner. In-depth coverage of .NET 2.0 hosting API. But why is this relevent? Because most every bit of it is used by SQL Server 2005, as its hosting the .NET runtime. That’s why. For example, as you read […]

They always get a bit of a jump on us WRT “current events” because of the timezone difference, especially if you live in the land of Pacific Time. I always come home on new year’s evening and by before it’s even dinner time, I’ve already missed new year in Sydney. We do get “Saturday Afternoon […]

I really like the feature known as “All Permissions Grantable” in which any permission can be managed using the GRANT verb, because there are no “magic” logins or users anymore. The coolest thing is that all server roles are now defined in terms of the permissions they have; this chart is in the BOL. In it, […]

Just was looking through my reported problems last night to see what the resolutions might be. Looks like the two having to do with managed provider were fixed. But not yet, ie, the fix is not in June CTP according to the report. Calling Connection.Dispose() and Command.Dispose() directly in-proc should now work, reported fixed. 6522 Error Anomaly […]

Today I embark on a new venture, a new part of my career. I’m joining SQLskills as Director of Developer Skills. I’ve worked with SQL Server since version 4.21 off and on, taught classes about SQL Server at least part of the time since version 6.0, and, for the past three/four or so years, spent […]

Sometime between when I left for Europe and when I started reading email that wasn’t addressed “question from student” (yes, I do answer all those), my “Database Geek of the Week” interview got published. By a guy from Red Gate Software named Douglas Reilly. The way I think this works is that someone suggests you for […]

Wow. I was going through old blog entries looking for some unique insight (TM) I had, once upon a time, about SQL Server 2005 error handling in SQLCLR. Found a bunch of stuff, not sure how unique (or insightful) it was. But… I realized I’ve been blogging over a year. First entry, July 1 2004 That’s […]

I just finished up our last gig for SQL Server 2005 Ascend last week in Paris (OK… in Les Ulis). It was my first class on the June CTP, and it seemed to go without incident. Students were enthusiastic and a good time appeared to be had by all. There are a two more “rescheduled for […]

While at TechEd, I purchased the first computer book I’ve actually had to shell out hard cash for in quite a while, The Rational Guide to SQL Server 2005 Service Broker by Roger Wolter. Congratulations, Roger, you’ve got a winner here! Weighing in at just under 250 pages, this book is an explanation of Service Broker […]

I meant to blog from TechEd but with all the activity, I never got the time. The talk on when to use T-SQL and when to use SQLCLR drew an overflow crowd, and folks seemed to really like it. Thanks to all of you who attended.   To attempt to summarize in one sentence, the “official” […]

For a long time I’ve been griping that SSMS projects (SQL Server Script projects) use absolute pathnames rather than relative paths. I didn’t think it was going to be fixed, I’d received a reply “this works as expected”. This week, as I was explaining to students why they had the put the SSMS projects in […]

I’ve heard rumblings on various newsgroups that our book “A First Look at SQL Server 2005 for Developers” is getting a little long in the tooth in some topics. Features got postponed in the client area, some syntax changed, the managed providers were combined, and so forth. I’ve been reporting on changes via this blog and […]

Saw another Kent post on TechEd 2005. I’ll be there too (mixed marketing slogan message with SQLPass). I’m doing a talk on “SQLCLR vs. T-SQL: Best Practices for Development in the Database”. Some folks on newgroups lately think that Microsoft may have mis-positioned this feature a bit. I disagree with this assessment. Come to the talk and see […]

Catching up on blog-reading. Kent Tegels wondered if I was speaking at SQLPass Community Summit. Yep, I am. I’m doing a 2-day pre-con on (what else) What’s new in SQL Server 2005 for developers. Also a tutorial session on XQuery for the “main conference”. I got “rained out” (to put it mildly) at last year’s […]

Hi all. Not much blogging out of me lately. I’ve been on vacation and, in between, I’ve been teaching SQL Server 2005 at Microsoft Sydney to some of Australia and New Zealand’s finest, including Russell Darroch, Greg Low, Chris Hewitt and Brent Challis. During the class Greg worked up his all-encompasing trigger to prevent cataloging […]

I’m back home again after being on the road three weeks out of the last four. Internet access was good, except for one hotel. I watched the person in front of me at checkin: Guest: How do you access the high-speed internet you mention in your ad?Clerk: Unplug the phone jack from the wall, replace […]

I’ve been using Visual Studio 2005 for over a year, since before the alpha version came out. Recently, I’ve had occasion to use VS 2003 and confirm what I thought I’d noticed. At first I thought it was an “alpha anomaly” that would be fixed, now I’m not sure. Has anyone else noticed the autocomplete is […]

One of the most amazing things that happened at the class last week was Wednesday night, when Dan Sullivan and the SQL Server Service Broker team did “Night of the Service Broker”. Dan did a couple of back-to-back broker talks. Then, the entire SQL Service Broker team, lead by Gerald Hinson and Roger Wolter, participated […]

I’m probably about the  hundredth person to notice this and blog about it, but I’m not usually at home when these things happen. Thought I’d take the opportunity. The SQL Server 2005 Community Technology Preview – Dec edition is available on MSDN subscriptions site The Express Manager tool (free tool for management of SQL Express) is also […]

I returned home from Europe late Saturday night. With catching up on my sleep, email, questions, Thanksgiving (which Mary and I celebrated on Sunday this year), and everything else, I just realized its Tuesday morning and no blog entries. Time to blog again. I had two great classes, the caliber of the students was outstanding […]

This is actually posted a few days after I wrote it. I haven’t done the “internet on the plane” service although I think it exists. 5:00AM Paris time, in the skies over ???? Right now, I’m in an alternate reality space that I call “AirplaneLand”. I’ve racked up over 100,000 “airplane miles” this year, which […]

SQLNS is an acronym for SQL Server Notification Services. Originally introduced as a “free addition” to SQL Server 2000, it is an integrated part of SQL Server 2005. SQLNS is a framework for a specific kind of application, a publish-subscribe notification application. We did a chapter on SQLNS 2005 in our “First look at SQL […]

[Comment heard from an XML afficianado] A: Uh…Yes, lots of them… User-schema separation always leads to the recollection that “user-schema separation is the way things are defined in ANSI SQL 1999”. Which brings up the subject of standards. Touting the ANSI SQL 1999 standard is passe now, because the ANSI SQL 2003 is out. And […]

I seem to have lost the gift, if I ever had it, for what some of my old collegues would call (with a smile on their face) “shameless self-promotion”. Last week at Win-Dev attendees at my talks pointed out to me that I didn’t have a slide that advertised my email address, or web site […]

Got back from Win-Dev last night…and immediately crashed. It was a great show, a little exhausting because some of the folks that I’d lined up for the data track bowed out and I did some alternative talks. This is the first year Win-Dev had a database-data access centric track and, if the comments were any […]

Made it to this conference, came a day early just in case (see I’m at SQLPass…not). No hurricanes at this one, but fairly nasty cold and rain yesterday. Conference is in Boston (well, actually Quincy, MA) this week. We have a database track this year, and I’ll be doing a day of SQL Server 2005 / […]

Just finished watching Ichiro break the single season hit record on TV. I’m a Seattle Mariner fan from way back when, and a big Ichiro fan. Most likely some of the students from my class in Tokyo this summer were watching it too. The announcer said it was on lots of channels there. This summer I realized they […]

My apologies to anyone who showed up at SQLPass this morning for the pre-pre-conference talks, which was supposed to include a day of SQL Server 2005 for developers given by me. If you were there, you probably noticed that I wasn’t. A storm called Hurricane Jeanne saw to that. The Orlando airport was closed from […]

After a summer of being a homebody, fall and winter will be *lots* of traveling. I’ll be doing the day of SQL Server 2005 for Developers at SQLPass, as a pre-pre-conference talk (a day before the pre-conference) later this month. And Ascend 2, in at least three continents, so far. Interestingly Ascend 2 starts almost […]

Thinking ahead to the SQLPass conference and also back a few weeks to the Ascend Airlift. Almost forgot that at the airlift I met Angel Saenz-Badillos for the first time in person. He introduced himself at an Ask the Experts session; I was doing the asking. He’s been writing about ADO.NET 2.0 and gave me […]

After getting a laptop with enough power this summer, I’d taken a week or so to familiarize myself with Virtual PC. Using it is a great way to run multiple versions of operating systems and databases for testing. It only took a day to realize that a mere 768meg of memory wasn’t going to be […]

Because of SQL Server 2005’s support of XQuery, a lot of folks have been asking about good XQuery-specific books. I’ve found two excellent books, each with a different focus. “XQuery From The Experts” is a compendium of essays by the folks in the W3C XQuery working group. It’s an excellent treatise of how XQuery is […]

I’m at the Ascend program launch this week; it’s being launched as part of a larger event. Yes, I finally got to meet Roger Doherty. I’m doing a day-long (actually a very long day-long) presentation of SQL Server 2005 new features for developers tomorrow. Today, I’m listening to Larry Chesnut speak about “DBA and scalability […]

I was writing slides and labs last week. I read Dare’s discussion of “The Sex and Cash theory“ about doing what you think is cool vs doing what you do for cash (work) that may not be as “sexy“. Didn’t feel so bad after that. My discussions with others revolved around the “official” words and terminolgy for various […]

I started my career as a maintanance programmer, and spent a lot of time searching out and fixing bugs, in existing code and also introduced by required program maintanance. Sometimes at 3am, with a hard deadline for the fix. I believe it shows in the way I present technologies (as in, “these are the intricate details, […]

sqlaccess.dll is the in-database .NET data provider, System.Data.SqlServer. If you do any data access in .NET stored procedures, UDFs, triggers, UDTs, and UDAggregates, you are using this provider. There is a version in Visual Studio Beta 1 (in \Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE\PublicAssemblies) that (I think) Visual Studio uses in its Database projects. There’s a […]

SQL Server 2005 beta 2 is now available for MSDN subscribers on the MSDN website. Although it’s not yet listed in the “what’s hot” section, it’s available under Servers/SQL Server/SQL Server 2005. I’ve got a few initial observations upon downloading it and installing it. 1. Read the readme file (ReadmeSQL2005.htm). Although this usually goes without […]

Since you’ve probably seen this on every other blog in the world already, I’m not going to post that the language that was known as X# and Xen has now shipped as COmega. It’s not a commercial product, but available at Microsoft Research. (Well, I guess I did post about it then, didn’t I?). I’ve […]

I collegue of mine is studying SQL Server Analysis Services and asks about APIs for it. I have the unique (wierd?) perspective of having come at OLAP through the APIs: OLE DB for OLAP, ADOMD, and XMLA. However, he’s interrested in .NET APIs and asks: “Can the OleDb data provider support the MSOLAP OLE DB […]

The first blog entry got me thinking. For someone supposedly cloistered writing a book, I have been doing some heavy traveling. For the last year, I’ve been teaching Yukon beta 1 quite a bit. Many students were participants in the Ascend program phase 1. They are folks from software companies who write application and system […]

I’ve finally decided to take the plunge and start this up. I’ve been in hiding for the last year and three quarters or so, working on a SQL Server 2005 (was Yukon) course and a companion book. The book, entitled “A First Look at SQL Server 2005 for Developers” shipped on Monday. I have a single […]