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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
Posted by Buck Woody | 0 Comments
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Wednesday, September 02, 2009 7:27 AM

T-SQL Prettifiers

OK, I don't think that's even a word, but the synonyms (can a non-word have a synonym?) are code beautifiers, sql formatters, etc. The basic idea is that it's a program that re-formats the text in a Transact-SQL statement using a standard set of rules.
Posted by Buck Woody | 0 Comments
Tuesday, September 01, 2009 7:03 AM

Guessing Gets Worse the Smarter You Are

I've been in some classes recently and one of the lessons we learned about communication was: "don't guess". As technical professionals, we often think we know the answer to the problem someone is describing about halfway through the person's description,
Posted by Buck Woody | 0 Comments
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Tuesday, August 25, 2009 8:32 AM

DBA's are from Mars; Developers are from Venus

They say that DBA's are those who put people into two categories: People who put others into two categories, and people who don't. Perhaps we're not quite THAT bad, but we do tend to see order in our world. But we see it in a particular way. I was reading
Posted by Buck Woody | 4 Comments
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Thursday, August 13, 2009 7:55 AM

SQL Server R2's Killer Feature

Donald Farmer and I are headed for a smackdown. If you don't know who Donald Farmer is, you probably haven't been to any technical conferences where BI was discussed. He's simply one of the finest minds on the topic that there is. Hius demos are flawless,
Posted by Buck Woody | 4 Comments
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Thursday, August 06, 2009 7:59 AM

The Mythical Silver Bullet

Have you ever sat in a meeting where you either got the distinct impression, or were told directly that you should just use product X or Feature Y to solve a problem?  Sure, we have a lot of features in SQL Server, but I don't think any of them is
Posted by Buck Woody | 3 Comments
Wednesday, July 29, 2009 8:06 AM

Commenting your Code

You should always add descriptive comments to any code that will live longer than a single event. It's useful not only for the other unfortunate souls blessed with your code, but for yourself, years later, when you say "what was I thinking here?"
Posted by Buck Woody | 7 Comments
Wednesday, June 17, 2009 7:44 AM

It Is The Wise Technologist That Makes Complicated Things Simple

They say that DBA's are people who put other people into two categories: People who put people into two categories, and people who don't.   I think lots of us put people into categories, not just DBA's.   I've run into a couple of "types"
Posted by Buck Woody | 3 Comments
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Monday, May 25, 2009 11:59 AM

Non-Technical - Memorial Day

I'm technically "off" today, but I wanted to dedicate this blog to the Memorial Day holiday here in the U.S. It's a time when we honor those who gave their lives in service to our country. I served, as did my wife, in the U.S. Air Force at bases
Posted by Buck Woody | 1 Comments
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Tuesday, April 28, 2009 7:45 AM

Should You Auto-Start SQL Server Services?

It's a fairly common practice to set the SQL Server Services (Engine, Agent, OLAP, RS, etc.) to automatically start when the server does. But is this a good idea? I don't set my services to start automatically. If the server is unexpectedly rebooted,
Posted by Buck Woody | 1 Comments
Thursday, April 09, 2009 8:30 AM

Slipstreaming SQL Server Installations and the SP1 Controversy

Yesterday, along with several hundred other folks, I told you that SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1 was out, and where to download it. I also mentioned that one of the big advantages in it was that you could now do "slipstream" installations.
Posted by Buck Woody | 2 Comments
Tuesday, April 07, 2009 5:36 AM

A Master Class in Sloppy Project Management

I was reading a story early this morning about a failed database project in the UK - and it was a big failure. The basic gist was that the project was managed badly - so badly that a Member of Parliment made the statement that "they delivered a master
Posted by Buck Woody | 1 Comments
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Monday, February 16, 2009 8:06 AM

Of Mainframes and Rivers

I started working with technology a long time ago - long enough to remember the mainframe way of life. Back then, a select group of folks controlled access to "the computer". On certain desks stood terminals, and programs were all custom-written
Posted by Buck Woody | 1 Comments
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Wednesday, February 11, 2009 7:58 AM

Scripts, Blogs, and Learning

I received an e-mail from a reader asking if I could post a link to a script he's documented in an article. I'm always happy to do that, but there are some things you should know about ANY script you find on the web, and while I'm at it, for how you read
Posted by Buck Woody | 4 Comments
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Tuesday, January 20, 2009 8:27 AM

Posting Comments to MSDN Blogs

I had a ready respond to my post yesterday via e-mail. He asked why I didn't have "Anonymous" comments enabled on the blog, and told me that I would get a lot more responses if I did. And he is correct - I did have the settings on this blog
Posted by Buck Woody | 2 Comments
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