A couple days ago I was playing around with some Event Notifications and the Certificate that I’d created for them on my development machine. Low and behold I’d made a classic mistake and forgotten to write down the password for the certificate. Thus I was left without a critical component necessary for signing my procedures. … Continue reading Getting Rid of a Certificate
Part of being in the technology industry requires a constant dedication to learning. The world is a constantly changing place and the things you know today aren’t going to be cutting edge tomorrow. Those that stay in place and don’t change with the times can sometimes appear to be zombies. Just drooling along from one … Continue reading Free Brains… I Mean Beta Exams
The SSWUG Spring 2010 Virtual Conference is coming up. On April 7, 8, and 9, attend a conference from the comforts of your living room, office, or couch. And while you are at it you’ll get to sit on on some incredible presentations, interaction with speakers, chat with other attendees, make new contacts, lots of … Continue reading SSWUG Spring ’10 Ultimate Virtual Conference
After setting up backups on a client’s servers, I started to get the error message below each night at approximately the same time. Sometimes on the same database and other times on other database. The only constant appeared to be the time in which the error occurred. Processed 1 pages for database 'MyDatabase', file 'MyDatabase_log' … Continue reading Interesting Backup Failure
A while ago I had read about the hidden threat of forwarded records. These silent killers are like storm troopers in the bush waiting to get you when you least expect it. And then the other day I saw a T-SQL Tuesday post by Sankar Reddy on (blog – twitter) on determining if your SQL … Continue reading Find Tables with Forwarded Records
Ever need to group dates and round them to intervals? I had this exact need for a report on wait stats I was working on for an upcoming post. I wanted the flexibility to be able to group a list of dates by either minute, hour, date, etc. And then also round those dates within … Continue reading Grouping and Rounding Dates
A couple weeks back I was asked “How come Microsoft has yet to put TRIM() in SQL?” I don’t really know why there isn’t a TRIM() function in SQL Server. There is an LTRIM for function removing leading spaces. And an RTRIM function for removing trailing spaces. But there isn’t a TRIM function. Let’s be … Continue reading Please, no TRIM()?
A while back, I noticed that Paul Randal (on twitter as @paulrandal) had started a new blog meme on three events that brought their life to where it is today. I’ve skipped a lot the past year’s memes due to time constraints but thought I’d chime in on this one and have a go at … Continue reading My Three Events
I’d like to thank Pam Shaw (twitter as @pamshaw) and Jorge Nunez (twitter as @sqlchicken) for letting me come down to Tampa this past weekend to present at SQL Saturday #32. Jeez, that picture doesn’t make me look very happy. For someone like me that tends to forget to take time off, this is a … Continue reading SQL Saturday 32 — ABCs of CTEs Deck
I've been selected to speak at the Tampa SQL Saturday coming up at the end of January. I'm a bit pumped to be going down there since I woke up this morning to below zero weather for yet another day. Not that I'm complaining, but my feet could definitely use a little bit of heat. … Continue reading Speaking at Tampa SQL Saturday
Strate SQL 