December, 2009

I love checklists. They give you a set of steps to take and when to take them for your systems, and help you standardize processes and procedures. They help you stay consistent, and let you know when you should do something, even when you might not be...

When you monitor for performance, you might start in the database server itself. But a true test really has more to do with the “round trip” of a data request from a client to a server and then the return of data back to the client. So I wired up this...

It seems the more things change the more they stay the same. One of the things I used to create on the mainframe system when I started years ago was a “charge-back” system.   It tracked the time and resources used by the employees so that we could...

Many data professionals deal in the storage, retrieval and display of data from a central set of systems. But there is another side to our craft, and I think it’s the most rewarding part of the job for both the professional and the organization they serve...

“Christmas, my child, is love in action. Every time we love, every time we give, it's Christmas.” - Dale Evans Rogers

When I teach I have to set my fonts really big so that folks in the back can see. I show PowerShell from time to time, and people keep asking me about my latest prompt.   Here’s what my prompt looks like:   { univac\Buck on UNIVAC using AMD64...

OK – In SQL Server 2008 R2 we did “re-use” an acronym or two (DAC and DTA), but it’s important to remember there are actually two parts to this new feature. One is the Data Application Component (DAC) and the other is the Data Tier Application (DTA)....

In SQL Server Azure, there are no Dynamic Management Views (DMVs) or Performance Monitor Objects and Counters that you can access, so you can’t run your standard performance monitoring that way. I suspect that as time goes on, SQL Azure will have some...

Many Data Professionals I deal with work with more than just SQL Server. I came from a background of COBOL flat-file databases, worked with Oracle, DB/2, Ingres, and lots of other databases as well. While I find that the SQL Server professionals I know...

"The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become." - Charles DuBois

I'm still re-reading the "Fourth Paradigm" book by Microsoft Research, and one section continues to intrigues me. There's a part where the book explains database design, and puts forth that the most important thing when you're designing large data sets...

Database design has been on my mind as of late – I’ve been teaching it in class, and I have a friend from Twitter that has a couple of questions. In fact, I think I’ll actually do a submission to PASS this year on this topic. Don’t think it has...

As many of you know, I used to work on the product team on SQL Server Management Studio. I think it does a good job of balancing the needs of a data developer and a data administrator, even though there are things I would like to have done to make it...

SQL Server contains many “Wizards. Wizards are simply programs that collect information based on user choices. The Wizard’s screens explain each step and the choices on that screen. Based on those answers collected from the user, the Wizard performs some...

"The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity." - Dorothy Parker

Consolidation, as it applies to databases, is simply putting more databases or SQL Server Instances on less hardware. This is a good thing, normally, because it allows you to save on hardware costs and use what you have at it’s highest capacity. It also...

I teach my college students to periodically script out their databases so that they can run the script to create the entire project on any system. I use this to check their homework, and to teach them about source-code control. We use the scripting wizard...

Last night I had to do something on a production system that you're not supposed to do. It's not important what I did or where I did it, but I will explain why I did it. A friend was in a situation where it was either "break the rules" or lose the system...

SQL Server has two major security vectors: “Principals”, which are primarily users and roles (groups), and “Securables”, which are primarily objects on the server or in the database, like tables or views. Many applications use Logins for their users,...

OK – most of the time I try to make the Quote of the Day (QOD) relevant or inspiring. But I like this one just because I like it, so here goes: “When a man’s best friend is a dog, that dog has a problem.” - Edward Abbey

In SQL Server, there are times that you need to do things in the operating system, and to allow that there is a feature called CmdExec. This is not always a good thing –whenever you leave the confines of SQL Server and go out to the operating system,...

I do lot of cooking, and I was taught to prepare everything ahead of time, and put everything in its place – something called “Mise en Place”. I chop everything and put it in little bowls, measure out the spices, lay out all of the pots and pans and so...

I got a question yesterday in the mail that I thought I would just answer here in a broad context. While I can’t troubleshoot or do performance tuning from a distance, there are some interesting concepts and suggestions this e-mail brings up: “I have...