For the past few years I've had the annual goal of attending a SQL Saturday in a location that's totally new to me. For 2016, that new place is Maine. The closest I've ever gotten to there is Boston, so I'm really looking forward to this trip and honored to be among the presenters at SQL Saturday Maine 2016!

I'll be …

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I've loved using Redgate's tools ever since I discovered what they were, and now that I'm a Friend of Redgate it's even more fun because I get to give feedback to their developers and hear all about what's coming out in new releases! Recently, Redgate announced SQL Prompt 7.2, with a bunch of new features and …
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This post took me a little longer to put together than it should have, but seeing as how I now have a two week old son at home, time is a little harder to come by these days! My T-SQL Tuesday topic ended up attracting 4 excellent responses, which I'm very happy to recap.

The first post was from Rob Farley (@rob_farley …

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Recently, PASS Immediate Past President Tom LaRock posted on the PASS blog about changes to the process by which members of the PASS Nomination Committee (NomCom) are chosen.

Previously, NomCom membership has been an elected position, which has necessitated another election each year prior to the PASS Board of …

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I'm so happy to once again be hosting T-SQL Tuesday. If you're not familiar, T-SQL Tuesday is a blogging party hosted by a different person each month. It's a creation of Adam Machanic, and it's been going on for over 6 years now! Basically the host selects a topic, defines the rules, and then everyone else blogs about …
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Thank you so much to the wonderful organizing committee of SQL Saturday Madison 2016 for selecting me to present!

I'm a huge fan of Madison – it's a great city that's not-too-terribly far from my house. I've had amazing times at their previous SQL Saturdays in 2012, 2013, and 2015, and I can only assume it will be just …

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We're proud to announce our lineup of speakers and sessions for SQL Saturday Chicago, taking place on Saturday, March 5, 2016!

Building a schedule for an event like this is never easy, especially given the number and variety of submissions. Thank you to all who submitted! We received a total of 148 abstracts from 66 …

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I'm already at peace with the fact that I'll never know all of SQL Server's secrets, but that doesn't stop me from being surprised every time I figure out something new. In this case, it's another "secret" hiding in plain sight (Books Online).

It turns out that the DROP DATABASE statement doesn't just have to …

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Registration is now open for Chicago's 6th SQL Saturday! It will be taking place at DeVry University's Addison Campus on March 5 2016. Please join us!

If you're not familiar with SQL Saturday, it's a free day of training for data professionals, covering a wide variety of topics relating to database administration, …

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When backing up a database or transaction log, SQL Server needs to know two basic things:

• What information the backup should contain
• Where it's going to be written

Many options exist to control the contents and behavior of a backup: whether it's full, differential, or a log, if it should be compressed, copy_only, …

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