I spent the first eight years of my career in enterprise IT for a Fortune 15 company. Back then IT was a vibrant work environment. Money was flowing into IT to fund resources, software, hardware and vendors. Today it’s a different story. The mantra for the past 11 years has been “do more with less”....

I’ve seen three basic patterns for handling forgotten web site passwords: Send a change password link to the email address on file Ask one or more challenge questions (or personal information) to unlock the change password screen Send the password, in plain text, to the email address on file There are...

In my day to day work I interact mostly with experts in the field of database technology and database administration. Every once in a while I get a gentle reminder that not everyone is an expert. Those reminders often come from forum questions from newbie and intermediate DBAs. When I come across one...

Are you a web developer? Regardless if you use the MS stack, an open source stack, or a combination please take a few minutes to fill out this survey on web-based database management tools. It’s especially important if you use MySQL and PHPMyAdmin in a hosted environment. Seriously the survey is short...

I often hear people characterize the MySQL community as strong and vibrant. In fact I’ve heard people attribute MySQL’s success to the strength of the community. I think SQL Server has a very robust community but that’s just my opinion. So what makes a strong community? I think it boils down to two simple...

Buck Woody likes to joke there are two types of people in the world: those who believe there are two types of people and those who don’t. Rim shot please. All joking aside there are two types of DBAs: those who are myopic and those who are leaders. This is greatly simplifying things but it’s important...

Answer: This guy! I’ve been following very closely the press and reviews on the early peaks of Windows 7. I’m not as big of a Vista hater as some people out there. In fact I like the OS. I recently had to reinstall XP on another machine and was absolutely astonished how old it looked and felt. In fact...

How many different database objects are there? I don’t know the answer either but off the top of my head I’d guess somewhere between 50 and 100, depending on how you count them. Yes, I could go count them but I’m writing this on a Saturday and between you and me I’m just too lazy to go do it. If you...

As an under-grad student @ Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, some 18 years ago, I first experienced the power of the technical community. I was working on a group project to build a little app for the Mac. The class was Software Engineering, CSC440, which covers the entire software lifecycle – requirements,...

Last Thursday morning @ the PASS Summit I participated in a panel discussion on automating DBA tasks. It was a great discussion and I was humbled by the other panel members. During the discussion I jotted down a few notes that I didn’t get to mention during the talk. The talk was recorded and will likely...

Back in July 2007 I started using Windows Live Writer as my exclusive blog writing tool. I’m not a heavy blogger but I do need a tool that’s easy to use and still helps me write more complicated postings when needed. I still LOVE Live Writer. It’s simple and intuitive. It doesn’t have a bunch of stupid...

I recently started using Windows Live Mesh to synchronize files between multiple machines. This software is so cool and so useful I just can’t say enough good things about it. In addition to sharing files with yourself you can setup folders to share files with others. Sharing files on the web has been...

The list of blogs run by the SQL Server product group keeps growing. Here I offer merely a snapshot in time of the current blogs. At the bottom there's also two links that list blogs by MS employees and SQL Server MVPs; these are not complete but offer a decent taste of what's available.   Microsoft...

In SQL Server we use Visual Studio Team System to track all of our work. There is a back-end integration between the Microsoft Connect site and our VSTS database. When an item is submitted through the Connect site it eventually flows to our VSTS database. We, the product group, can manage the bug directly...

This year @ TechEd I had the privilege of sharing the stage with Kevin Kline , Steve Jones , Buck Woody , and Allen White to discuss automating DBA tasks/processes. We discussed why automation is important and some of the technologies you can use to automate those tasks. Click here to launch the video...

I'm spending some vacation time with my family, my in-laws, and my wife's sister and her family. We're at my in-laws cabin in Clear Lake California. Clear Lake is a beautiful place with a interesting juxtaposition of multi-million dollar homes right near people living at the poverty line. I've been coming...

Buck Woody, a PM on my team, has launched a new weekly Podcast entitled "Real-World DBA". You can find out more information at his Blog . Here's a link to the first episode . I encourage you to take a listen and provide feedback. This is not a marketing driven Podcast!

As a PM in SQL Server I read through just about every bug entered for the components my team owns. Given the surface area of what my team owns this translates into a lot of bugs. I don't characterize it that way to disrespect the team or the quality of the product but rather to make a point there are...

Thanks for the great comments. Great in that you took the time to provide them. Not great in what they say about Connect. I was surprised by the feedback - but maybe I shouldn't have been. This prompted me take a very quick look at some SQL2K5 SP2 data. I'm reporting on the areas I own (Agent, DBMail...

Does the feedback mechanism on Microsoft Connect really work? By "work" I mean is customer feedback changing the product? From my perspective it's too early to make the call. In SQL2K5 SP2 we tried to address the top issues submitted through connect (based on the voting mechanism). I haven't run the...