Portillo's beef sandwiches are best when the entire sandwich is dipped in gravy so the bread becomes gelatinous. (Used with permission) SQL Saturday #211: Chicago 2013 is approaching quickly! I've gotten a few emails inquiring about what food will be served, and I'm very happy to announce that lunch for this year's SQL …

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Last week while at work I received a phone call from a recruiter. It was pretty standard until they decided to turn into a jerk. I sent the following letter to the recruiter's agency. I doubt I'll get a reply, but if I do I will be sure to share it here. Identifying info has been removed to protect the not-so-innocent. …

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It's once again the second Tuesday of the month, meaning it's T-SQL Tuesday! This month's topic comes to us from Jen McCown (blog | @JenniferMcCown). Jen is asking us to share our knowledge about filegroups, and it just so happens that I have a story about migrating to new storage that involved a large number of file …

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I am very happy and honored to have been chosen as a presenter at SQL Saturday #206 coming up on April 6, 2013 in Madison, Wisconsin! As I previously mentioned I had a wonderful time there last year and am definitely looking forward to heading back. This time around I'll be giving a new presentation on tuning backups …

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Being a DBA and data professional doesn't mean I always work with SQL Server – sometimes I'm not working with databases at all. We've recently acquired some new storage at work (aka Daddy Warbucks bought us a new SAN) and I've been charged with moving things to it. Some aspects of this are easier than others and there …

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I'm fortunate to be able to work with some rather large SQL Server instances on a daily basis, including databases over 25TB in size. Due to their bulk, "VLDBs" (Very Large Databases) present some challenges for DBAs: following best practices for small transactional systems might not be feasible on a VLDB. …

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Warning Hi there! If you're stumbling across this page because you have recently been bitten by a cat (and I get many comments and emails telling me this is the case) PLEASE SEEK MEDICAL ASSISTANCE IMMEDIATELY! Really. As you will read below, time is of the essence. So please PLEASE go see a physician, or to urgent …

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Where can you find deep dish pizza, questionable politics, amazing architecture and a great SQL Saturday all in one stop? Sweet Home Chicago! The organizing committee in the windy city has been hard at work, and SQL Saturday #211: Chicago 2013 is open for registration. This year the event will be taking place on …

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Three weeks ago I had quite the trip to the Pacific Northwest. I was very fortunate to present in Portland at SQL Saturday #172, and then headed up to Seattle for the 2012 PASS Summit. It was a fantastic week and I hope I can do something similar next year! Here's some thoughts I had from each event in no particular …

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At work, a key function of my team is importing new systems into our data warehouse, most of which come from vendors. To do this we utilize many different methods depending on the capabilities of the source system and desired timeliness of the data. ETL through SSIS, snapshot replication, and transactional replication …

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