November, 2008

We've had a great Thanksgiving data, and in our family we always go around the table and mention what we are thankful for. I thought of this quote Goethe: Nothing should be prized more highly than the value of each day. - Goethe

Happy Thanksgiving! If you're in the US, we give one day a year (although I'm thankful year-round) to giving thanks for all our blessings. Today I thought I might share a little technique I use to perform an action across a set of objects, using a text...

In my pre-conference on HADR at PASS, our team identified somf great links on Database Mirroring and other specific topics. I promised I would post those in my blog, so here they are: · DBM TechNet Article: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol...

If your company uses laptops (and of course they do) make sure that the data on them is secure, especially if you're using replication in SQL Server to store data on them. Here at Microsoft I use Vista on my laptop with Bitlocker - a free, easy-to-use...

Our team made some announcements at PASS about a new set of features we're working on, and it generated a lot of questions. If you're one of those folks, or if you weren't able to get to PASS this year, there are some good links I'd like to pass on about...

Today was the final day of the conference, but I had a packed house for our discussion on PowerShell and SQL Server. I wanted to blog about one concept I covered in the demo: Why would I use PowerShell when I have SSIS, stored procs, batch files and other...

This morning started bright and early for the Manageability Team (MPU) that I'm a part of. We hosted a breakfast for a select group of Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) for SQL Server to go over some of the information we presented yesterday in the keynote...

Well, the "official" start of PASS was today, and it opened with a bang! Ted Kummert, the "head guy" of the entire SQL Server product, gave the keynote and he introduced a lot of the new technology we're working towards. First things first: We're releasing...

We’re still on pre-conferences here at PASS, and for the last two days there has been a “SCAN” (SQL Customer Advisory Network) meetings where we preview new technologies and get feedback from them on current technologies, listening and learning how they...

Yeah, I’m at another conference – but I didn’t have to travel far for this one! I’m at the Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) conference here in Seattle, Washington. OK, I did have to take a train and a bus to get to the convention center...

Yesterday here in the U.S. the state of California had a "Shakeout", which was a practice for what to do in case of an earthquake. Although not everyone was involved, many government agencies were, and some companies also joined in. Japan also...

Well, it's late at night, and I'm just now writing this morning's blog! I've been unbelievably busy, and I'm also preparing for two presentations next week at PASS. The first presentation is a Pre-Conference on HADR - or High Availability / Disaster Recovery...

I've had a lot of folks ask me about inlcuding a new feature for SQL Server Management Studio, only to point out that we have it already. That's understandable - SSMS has a lot of features, and if you're not using it all day, it's impossible to learn...

There's a new, streamlined installation package for SQL Server Express that makes it a lot easier to push out to your systems. Make sure you bookmark this link: http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlexpress/archive/2008/11/05/announcing-the-sql-express-2008-installation...

Bringing all the concepts I've described in the last few posts into place, you can see the results of what Alexi wants in a Policy. Navigating to the Management node in SQL Server Management Studio, he can create a new Policy, give it a name, and since...

I’ve presented 6 sessions so far at TechEd Europe in Barcelona, and I’m explaining the how and why of the basics of Policy Based Management. Today I wanted to clear up a few terms that we use in PBM. The example I use in the demos is of a DBA named...

Following on from yesterday’s post, I wanted to develop this idea of “intent” in management. What we mean by that is that you should be able to declare your intent about a situation on your server, such as “I want to make sure that all stored procedures...

Yesterday I gave two presentations to the attendees at TechEd Europe here in Barcelona, Spain. The first was on “A Day in the Life of the DBA”, which I’ve blogged about previously. The second presentation was on an overview of Policy Based Management...

Well, it's 6:00 AM in Barcelona, Spain, and still 9:13 PM at home - so I'm "late" posting this or "early", depending on how you look at it! I had a 20+ hour trip, with all the waiting at the airports and all that. You gotta love traveling. I'll be...