All MCM free training videos now available
The final set of MCM training videos we recorded for Microsoft have been posted on TechNet and are available for download. For your convenience, I've
The final set of MCM training videos we recorded for Microsoft have been posted on TechNet and are available for download. For your convenience, I've
The last post of the year! It's been an excellent year all round – I thought that instead of doing a long post about goals
In 2009 I read a whopping 100 books (see my wrap-up post) and it seemed at times like I spent every waking moment reading, so
(Yes, I know I haven’t editorialized the last survey on What’s in a Job Title – I will in the New Year.) Over the last
We'd like to thank you all for reading all our stuff all year, for coming to our classes and conference sessions, and for being our
There's been a lot of discussion on the MVP distribution list about various certifications and what SQL Server roles they cater to. Furthermore, there's a
Happy Holidays! Back in January I ran a special offer on our new (at the time) auditing service, and as the holidays approach I'd like
After a lot of fine-tuning, we’ve come up with a comprehensive training curriculum to satisfy those looking for comprehensive SQL Server training. We’ve designed four
(New for 2020: we’ve published a range of SQL Server interview candidate screening assessments with our partner Kandio, so you can avoid hiring an ‘expert’ who
This is the last (and longest) post of my bald eagle shots from last week in Haines, Alaska. I'm calling this one "the many faces
Two more blog posts to go – this one has my favorite flight shots from the week. All photos were taken in RAW at 5184×3456
Today we got really up-close-and-personal with the bald eagles up here in Haines, AK. It was a toasty 22F out on the river delta but
This week Kimberly and I are in Haines, AK honing our photography skills using the numerous bald eagles as subjects. We're up here with photo-pro
A few people have asked over the last few days how Kimberly and I have SSMS set up for presenting so I thought I'd do
Last Tuesday I hosted T-SQL Tuesday #012 (see here for the call for participation) and posed the question "why are DBA skills necessary?" This month
This morning at PASS our good friend Joseph Sack, who runs the SQL Server Microsoft Certified Master (MCM) program, announced some sweeping changes to the
We like to keep our class sizes limited to around 30 so that everyone gets a chance to ask all the questions they want and
Yesterday on Twitter a few people expressed disgust at a conference slide listing transactional replication as a high-availability (HA) technology. I took exception to that
The November 2010 edition of TechNet Magazine is now available on the web and contains my latest feature article. In this article I give my top-10
I’ve recently been creating some content about wait stats analysis and I think it would be really interesting to see what kind of waits people
In November we're doing T-SQL Tuesday a week early (Tuesday November 2nd) so that it doesn't clash with PASS and I'll be your host! What is T-SQL
Back when I did the DBA-Myth-A-Day series in April, many people asked for the 30 blog posts to be collected up into a document for
Yes, it's that time again. We're just about to have the Fall show so its time to start planning for the Spring 2011 show. Once again Kimberly
This month’s T-SQL Tuesday is being run by fellow-MVP Sankar Reddy (blog|twitter) and the topic is about Misconceptions in SQL Server. (Check out the 60-page PDF
Another quickie today. Don't ask why, but this morning I was trying to programmatically work out which tables have foreign-key references to table Sales, because
A quickie… this morning I've been writing a bunch of T-SQL code (yes, occasionally I'm allowed to do that :-) and I needed to programmatically check
Time is running out to sign up for our BI class in Bellevue, WA in a couple of weeks… there are some spots left so
It's been six weeks or so since I posted anything technical here – my summer vacation from being online, and your summer vacation from having
It's official! We're doing another 5-day SQL Immersion Event (our ever-popular SQL Server master-class) this year in the US! Through popular demand we've decided to put
It's official! We're putting on a 5-day BI Immersion Event this year in the US! We've just confirmed with our well-known BI expert, Stacia Misner,
We've got two more classes on the books now for 2010 – a 5-day BI class in Bellevue, WA the week of October 25th, and
Hey folks, Just a quick note to let you know that Kimberly and I will be offline from this weekend for four weeks. We're going
Last time I posted about SSDs I presented the findings from sequential inserts with a variety of configurations and basically concluded that SSDs do not provide
The July edition of TechNet Magazine is available on the web now and has the latest installment of my regular SQL Q&A column (and I
Back at the start of July I kicked off a survey around your plans for SSDs (see here) and now I present the results to
Last week we sat down with our good friends Richard Campbell and Greg Hughes of RunAs Radio and recorded an interview about how to learn
Every month there's a flurry of blog posts around the same topic – it's called T-SQL Tuesday and is a neat concept. This month it's
Over the last month we've been teaching in Europe and I haven't had much time to focus on benchmarking, but I've finally finished the first
This November Brent, Kimberly and I will be at the PASS Summit in Seattle as usual doing workshops and Spotlight Sessions (90 minute sessions to dive deeply
With exactly a month to go until our 5-day Immersion event in Bellevue, WA we've got 25 people registered for the class (wow!) and space
It's been a while since I conducted blog surveys so I'm going to do a few through July and August. First up – I'd like
(Happy Independence Day to everyone back home in the USA! We’re in Dublin for another week…) Back at the end of April I conducted a
Since the start of the year we've been inundated with consulting and auditing requests, which is a good sign for the recovery from the economic effect
One of the places I really look forward to going every year is Dublin – not just for the countryside, friendly people, and our very
Many times I'm asked whether having multiple data files can lead to an improvement in performance. The answer, as with all things SQL (except concerning
(Check out my online training courses: SQL Server: Detecting and Correcting Database Corruption and SQL Server: Advanced Corruption Recovery Techniques. We can also help you with disaster recovery.) As a
(Check out my online training courses: SQL Server: Detecting and Correcting Database Corruption and SQL Server: Advanced Corruption Recovery Techniques. We can also help you with disaster recovery.) One of
Yesterday morning I was tagged in a blog post by my very good friend Buck Woody (twitter|blog), wondering how I travel (and by extension, how
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