I'm a little late getting the information from my Fargo SQL Saturday session posted, titled "Discovering the Plan Cache". But it's better a little late that never. Even though it was the end of the day, the session had great turnout and lots of good questions. Reviewing my session evals, I saw quite a few high … Continue reading Presentation Materials “Discovering the Plan Cache” #SQLSat175
Last Thursday, I delivered a presentation for Pragmatic Works Training on the T's. The session for last week was Introduction to SQL Server Security, a part of last month's series of introductory presentations. The abstract for the sessions is: One of the most often overlooked feature sets of SQL Server is it's security features. The focus … Continue reading Webcast Presentation Materials: Introduction to SQL Server Security
It's the start of the month of May, or at least the first Monday in May. Hopefully you aren't nursing too much pain from a weekend that included two fairly dissimilar holidays. First, there was Star Wars Day on Saturday. Followed by Cinco de Mayo on Sunday. There should have been something in there for … Continue reading May 2013 – Monthly SQL Server Checklist
It seems that with the Disney purchase of Star Wars this past year that May the Fourth is coming on strong this year. I wasn't planning to write up anything, since it kind of felt like this year the holiday was getting plenty of exposure, but then I want to Amazon and found out there … Continue reading May the Fourth Be With You – Kindle Bonus!
There are countless sources for information on SQL Server available today. There are books, webcasts, conferences, and blogs. With all of these sources, it is easy to forget that there are white papers available from Microsoft. It is important that we make an effort to read the white papers that are available. The trouble is, … Continue reading 5 SQL Server White Papers Every DBA Should Read
We are down to the last few days before first SQL Saturday in Fargo. It's been some work pulling it all together, but with the help of Ted Krueger (Blog | @Onpnt), Sarah Strate (Blog | @DanceM0m), and Jes Borland (Blog | @grrl_geek), we are almost ready for the weekend. The question I have for you is... … Continue reading Fargo SQL Saturday (#SQLSat175) Schedule Is This Weekend
In last week's post, I talked about the steps required to backup a Azure SQL Database. That post leaves us asking what's the use of having a backup of a database, if you aren't going to restore it somewhere. And more importantly, if you can't restore a database, or don't know how, then the backup … Continue reading Restoring Azure SQL Database to a Local Server
When I first started working with Azure SQL Databases, I wasn't sure what it would take to backup a database. In fact, I wasn't even sure if this concept was appropriate when it came to databases hosted in "the cloud". What I found was that the concept of backing up databases in the Azure cloud … Continue reading Backing Up Azure SQL Database to the Cloud
Each release of SQL Server is chalk full of new features and an assorted amount of bells and whistles. Some of these, like Availability Groups and ColumnStore, are great additions and their introduction includes much fanfare. Among all of those new features, is the occasional little bell which offers us a chance to change how we investigate SQL … Continue reading A Replacement for DBCC IND in SQL Server 2012
After lunch, I led the session "What Are You Waiting For?" at SQL Saturday Chicago #211. It was another well-received session and the attendees definitely learned a lot about the value in wait stat analysis. The only downside, was my snap decision to add an extended event demo to show the connection between looking at wait stats … Continue reading Presentation Materials “What Are You Waiting For?” #SQLSat211
Strate SQL 