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
Last week I presented at the March Minnesota SQL Server User Group (PASSMN) meeting on using CTEs in SQL Server. The session is meant as an overview and introduction to CTEs with some examples of their use and what some of the effects can be. Overall the session was well received and I got the … Continue reading ABCs of CTEs at PASSMN
Every now and then I work with people that just use the default trace templates available within SQL Server Profiler. Using the default traces and you end up being limited to just some performance stats on procedures and batches that have completed. There isn't exactly an issue with doing this, except that there is so … Continue reading There Is Much More to Profiler
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()?
Looking for an introduction into the different high availability technologies available in SQL Server? Check out this webcast that I recorded for SSWUG. It’s being made available on Feb 24th and covers the following: With failover clustering, data mirroring, peer-to-peer replication, and log shipping available there is an option or two for every scenario. While … Continue reading Webcast: High Availability Through SQL Server
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
Strate SQL 