Community, community, community, community…
Back when I was at Microsoft, I witnessed Steve Balmer doing his mad "Developers, developers, developers, developers!" mantra a few times. (Checkout this video of
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Back when I was at Microsoft, I witnessed Steve Balmer doing his mad "Developers, developers, developers, developers!" mantra a few times. (Checkout this video of
I'm going to do two surveys this week. In this one I want to know what the relationship is like between the DBA team and
(Edit 7/11/13: We’ve given out all our current user group swag – thanks) Anywhere in the world? If you do and you’d like a SQLskills
Just before Christmas last year I created a survey to ask you what your job title is and additionally, if you wanted, what you actually
I've noticed a few new SQL blogs spring up over the last month or so and someone asked me on Facebook this morning about linking
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
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
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
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
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
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
This evening I was reading an article in The Washington Post called Twelve Things The World Should Toss Out and it inspired me to start a
(Look in the Misconceptions blog category for the rest of the month’s posts and check out the 60-page PDF with all the myths and misconceptions
Earlier today there was a thread on Twitter asking about what degrees and academic background people have who work on SQL Server. I volunteered to
Over the last 18 months a group of SQL Server MVPs, led by Paul Nielsen and including Kimberly and I as editors, have been working on
(Be sure to join our community to get our monthly newsletter with exclusive content, advance notice of classes with discount codes, and other SQL Server
Several times this week I've been asked about how to become an MVP. A few people have posted on this, but here's my take. I think
Thanks to the attention of some scurrilous parasites, all comments will now be moderated. And to said parasites, please be aware that there's no point
There's another DBA 'chain-blog' going around, this time started by Tim Ford, and I was tagged by Tom LaRock. The idea is that you're stuck
Quick blog post to celebrate a bit of a milestone and round out the month of May – no blogging tomorrow. Earlier today I was
Last week's survey was another two-fold one – when you buy new servers, what architecture to you predominantly buy, and why?; when you buy new
Go to www.wordle.net/create and enter a URL. Here's what it thinks of my current blog homepage: Cool!
A sad, tear-jerky story about how a socially-inept, stay-at-home shut-in, SQL expert gets a new lease of life and finds he really does have friends out
5/11/09: Little bit of a rewrite today as it seems some people are taking what I'm saying the wrong way. Over on Ed Bott's blog,
I was in a discussion earlier today, and it's one I've had lots of times in the past – both inside and outside Microsoft and
People are saying they can't find me – that's a Twitter issue with indexing. Here's the direct link: http://twitter.com/PaulRandal and Kimberly's at http://twitter.com/KimberlyLTripp
After being mercilessly pressurized by many people (and I blame Jason Massie the most), I've joined Twitter and I'll be commenting lots on it. Why
This feels like a bit of a strange post for me to make, but I want to make it anyway, and don't take it the
Not an April Fool (although SQL Server Central has a great one) – Kimberly and I were both re-awarded MVP status for another year –
Just noticed this come up on my Facebook news feed – how to code assignment statements when programming (not in T-SQL): if (foo == 4)
I'm very pleased, and deeply honored, to announce that I've been made a Microsoft Regional Director. This is one of a very small group of
There's a long-running discussion with people tagging each other to post advice for people new to SQL Server, about what they know now and wished
There's been an interesting discussion on SQLServerCentral about whether this question is valid for a DBA interview: what's the name of the executable that runs
One of the opinions that was expressed yesterday by our developer friends (a bunch of Regional Directors – and look, Kimberly's the featured RD today
Today we've spent a lot of the day in discussions with some folks about developers vs. DBAs, and how it's often the case that the
If you're new to the blog then you may not have seen my Search Engine Q&A series (or seen it and not realized what it
As you may have been seeing over the last few weeks, there are intermittent errors in some parts of mine and Kimberly's blogs. Our hosting
It’s become something of a tradition for me to do a Valentine’s Day blog post (the 2008 one about SQL Server blogs is at Wow
Thanks for your patience while our blog engine back-end was updated. You should find that the response time is much better now. You'll notice that
Just a quick post to say that all our blogs and the SQLskills.com website is moving to a new software backend this coming Wednesday through
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
(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
(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
Fixed now – thanks so much! Folks – a couple of people have setup their systems to refresh *all* our category feeds every five minutes
A few short notes this morning regarding the blogs and other stuff. We had a big outage over the weekend, which rather embarrassingly manifested itself
Last year I posted on my old blog about the active SQL Server team blogs. I just happened to post on February 14th and so
After many reminders (thanks Adam Machanic!) I’ve added Conor and Simon to the two aggregated feeds over all the SQLskills.com blogs. There are two feeds:
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