Anybody who’s ever jousted with nullable database columns will find this humorous: The Vermillion Screen of Death (Raw Materials Comic Strip) Well, I did anyway.

A SQL Ranger friend of mine in the UK gave me the heads up to this yesterday. (Thanks, Ben!!) Apparently, back in December 2008, Sybase ported some of our samples to SQL Anywhere. Needless to say, I’ve got mixed feelings about Sybase porting AdventureWorks to their platform. Sort of like a cherry-cheese...

We’re doing planning work for SQL Server Kilimanjaro and the next SQL Server wave that follows it, which means product samples, community projects and AdventureWorks. Some people have suggested doing away with AdventureWorks in favor of something new, but I don’t see that happening... unless there is...

Brian Walker has a good pair of articles on Thou Shalt Nots™: I had the chance to examine three business databases in five weeks and I'm still staggered by what I found. These are SQL Server databases serving as critical business foundations for companies generating millions of dollars in revenue per...

In a striking change of direction, I'm happy to announce that AdventureWorks is being deprecated and abandoned for SQL Server 2008 samples in favor of long-time favorite databases of simple-minded data modelers: Northwind and pubs. Also, I can gleefully announce, in the spirit of oversimplification,...

Buck's got a great point about how SQL Server's development themes are managed from the top down: It isn't a matter of thinking up single features or changes to the product, it's a cohesive direction we all want to go. Carpe Datum : Why on earth are you working on that? Reading his blog always make me...

I loved the book 1984 , even though it was almost 1984 by the time I read it. The fact that the date was around the corner and technology wasn't anywhere close kind of took the punch out of the story. I guess it didn't scare me the way it scared "previous generations" (to put it politely)....

Vote early and often for your favorite implementations on your favorite platform! (Hint: your favorite platform is SQL Server.) Have you completed a data warehouse or business intelligence implementation that you think other organizations could learn from? Would you like some recognition for your accomplishment...

This month (on top of all the other excitement), I've been the facilitator for the MVP Academy course "Designing Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 Databases." (Calling me the instructor would be like putting lipstick on a pig -- with apologies to the pig.) If you're not an MVP or if you...