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October 2009 - Posts

Friday, October 30, 2009 7:16 AM

Bonus Post: My PASS Schedule

I’ll be speaking again at PASS this year, and I’m heavily involved in the event when I’m not speaking. I would love to meet you – if you’re a reader of this blog, please stop by and say hello! As of right now, here’s where’s I’ll be: Tuesday: 11:00 AM
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Friday, October 30, 2009 6:48 AM

Quote of the Day: What is Impossible

When I worked at the Space Center in Florida, one of my favorite quotes was posted over a particular rocket engine display near my office. It’s by Werner Von Braun, a German scientist who is largely responsible for the Redstone and Apollo Space Programs.
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Thursday, October 29, 2009 6:23 AM

Don’t be a DBA – Be a Data Professional

I get asked quite frequently now about the “Cloud” technology and how it will affect the job of the DBA. The answer to that is pretty easy: If you’re “just a DBA”, then it will affect you a great deal. The fact that someone else will add users, take backups
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Wednesday, October 28, 2009 8:13 AM

Templates for New Query Window

When I’m in SQL Server Management Studio and I click the “New Query” button, my Query Window comes up like this: /* <ScriptFileName, SYSNAME, ScriptFileName>.sql Purpose: <Purpose, SYSNAME, Purpose> Author: <Author, SYSNAME, Buck Woody>
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Tuesday, October 27, 2009 7:14 AM

Disaster Response and the Physical Plant

Near our home is a Dam about to break. It was built long ago, and even though millions were taxed and spent for it, little to none of that money ever got to the actual shoring up and maintaining the dam  over time (don’t get me started). Anyway,
Posted by Buck Woody | 0 Comments
Monday, October 26, 2009 6:50 AM

How Normal(ized) Should You Be?

Normalization is the process of removing repeating values from your data design, and ensuring that the values depend on the Primary Key in the table. OK, it’s a bit more complicated than that, but this definition will do for this post. So how far DO you
Posted by Buck Woody | 2 Comments
Friday, October 23, 2009 6:56 AM

Women and Cats

I will not explain why I chose this quote for today (it could have to do with the fact that I’m the only male in the house and yes, we do have a cat): “Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.” - Robert
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Thursday, October 22, 2009 9:00 AM

New Business Metric: DBOM

With all of the travelling, writing, speaking and working I’ve been doing lately, I’ve come across a new trend. My schedule is so fragmented that I communicate primarily through e-mail, and I’ve noticed that I respond to, and hear back from, various people
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Wednesday, October 21, 2009 7:14 AM

The 20 Queries

In the book “The Fourth Paradigm” , Jim Gray describes the modeling process he came up with modeling large databases. He was working with scientists, researchers and others, and the data sets they were generating were huge – terabytes of data at a time.
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Tuesday, October 20, 2009 6:49 AM

The Fourth Paradigm

Microsoft Research published a book based on Dr. Jim Gray’s research into Computer Science, called “The Fourth Paradigm”. It’s about 300 pages long, and it fascinated me so much I stayed up reading it last night. I have so many notes to decompress it
Posted by Buck Woody | 0 Comments
Monday, October 19, 2009 6:19 AM

Color Me Informed

I got a response via e-mail to my post on using color connections – and I wanted to share it here: “ I just read your tip for color coding your Mgmt Studio connection.  I wanted to point out a couple things.  If you connect to a server where
Posted by Buck Woody | 1 Comments
Friday, October 16, 2009 3:12 AM

Quote of the Day: Learn from others

I love this one, and try to practice it each day: “Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't possibly live long enough to make them all yourself.” - Martin Vanbee
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Wednesday, October 14, 2009 5:48 PM

Bonus Post – See you in Orlando!

I’ll be traveling all day tomorrow (Thursday), so no time for a post. I didn’t want you to think I’d “gone offline” permanently, so I’ll post this tonight. I’m flying down to the “Holy Land” – Florida – for a weekend of SQL Server. I’ll be part of the
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Wednesday, October 14, 2009 8:37 AM

Color Your Connections

In cyber-space, no one can hear you scream. Have you ever connected to a server, thought it was a testing or development system, and only a split second after you pressed “F5” to run that command, realized that it was the production server? Yeah….me neither
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Tuesday, October 13, 2009 8:44 AM

Go To Find Combo

A friend of mine – Bill Ramos – showed me a little-used feature in Management Studio that I’ve been using ever since. It’s a combo box that works in the Query Window and it allows you to find text quickly in a script, but it also has a hidden benefit.
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Monday, October 12, 2009 3:55 AM

DBAs and Metallurgy

Most of the time the business side of the house isn’t that technology-savvy. Sure, they know how to use their systems and even have a computer at home, but it’s not like they could calculate a TCP/IP subnet, nor should they. I was helping with a project
Posted by Buck Woody | 0 Comments
Friday, October 09, 2009 8:01 AM

Quote of the Day: Get Started!

Sometimes I need a little motivation, other than the strong coffee I drink. Mr. Tolkien helps me put it all in perspective: “It's the job that's never started that takes the longest to finish.” - J.R.R. Tolkien
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Thursday, October 08, 2009 6:58 AM

Channel 9 – The PASS Interviews

I recently interviewed (on Channel 9) a few of the folks that are presenting at PASS this year – I thought I would share the links so you can check them out: http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/LarryLarsen/Upcoming-SQL-PASS-Summit-1/ http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/LarryLarsen/Upcoming-SQL-PASS-Summit-2
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Wednesday, October 07, 2009 6:50 AM

Free Hyper-V Book

I work with a gentleman here in the Pacific Northwest who joined the Microsoft Server team from VMWare, and he in turn has a good friend (John Kelbley) who wrote a book on Hyper-V that you can get for free –  you can get it here: http://www.netapp.com/hyper
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Tuesday, October 06, 2009 9:18 AM

The Much-Maligned Database Designer

There’s a feature in SQL Server Management Studio called the “Database Designer”, and it’s a strange beast indeed. It’s a mix between a graphical database design tool and an Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD). Unfortunately, I don’t think it does either
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Monday, October 05, 2009 7:05 AM

SQL Saturday Redmond Wrap-Up

Wow – we had a fantastic time at the “Mixer” building in Redmond this past Saturday. We had around 300 folks show up, straining the rooms to capacity. We had some top-notch presenters, and a very receptive audience, and we even made it through breakfast
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Friday, October 02, 2009 7:14 AM

Quote of the Day: On Times like these…

When I worked at the Space Center in Florida, I drove around in a NASA van to the various sites and worked on computers – everything from hardware to software. At lunchtime, I would pull over to the beach near pad 17 and turn on the A.M. radio and listen
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Thursday, October 01, 2009 6:20 AM

SQL Saturday in Redmond – Stop By and Say Hello!

http://www.sqlsaturday.com/ This Saturday I’ll be speaking at the “SQL Saturday” event in my own backyard – Redmond, Washington! I really enjoy these events – enough to give up a Saturday to come out and join you. No, we don’t get paid for these, it’s
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