March Madness is once again upon us, which means it's time for one of the biggest time sinks of the year: filling out a bracket for the pseudo-sanctioned office NCAA pool. Along with the superbowl, this is a hallowed time when bosses turn a blind eye to all the cash that seems to be heading towards that person who has …

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This month's T-SQL Tuesday is brought to us by newly-minted MCM Argenis Fernandez (blog | @DBArgenis), who I had the pleasure of meeting in person for the first time a few weeks ago. Argenis is asking if we specialize or not, why we do (or don't) specialize, and why we feel that's a good thing. For a very long time …

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This week I was very fortunate to speak at the February 2012 MADPASS user group meeting. I've seen lots of positive tweets about the group over the course of the past year and had been hoping to attend a meeting of theirs, so when I got the email a few months ago asking if I would present I jumped at the chance. I left …

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Next Wednesday I'll have the pleasure of speaking at MADPASS! I've been meaning to visit this group for a while, so I'm very excited to head up there and be speaking. Here's all the pertinent info: WHERE: 2310 Crossroads Drive, Madison, WI 53718 WHEN: Wednesday, February 22, 2012. 5:30 PM I’ll be giving one of my …

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Happy T-SQL Tuesday to all! (and happy Valentine's Day too!) This month's T-SQL Tuesday comes to us courtesy of Steve Jones (blog | @way0utwest). Steve is asking us to write about "big data" – specifically the problems we've solved or interesting ways we've found to work with it. In honor of the holiday, I'm …

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If you're reading this, you probably already know that while backup strategies are important, restore strategies are what really matter. If you aren't able to restore a database when a disaster has occurred and money's on the line, you may find yourself very quickly updating your resume and leaving town. Practicing …

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Knowing when and how often your indexes are used can really come in handy. Indexes that are never utilized aren't worth keeping around, and knowing their usage patterns can be a big help when making decisions regarding things such as filegroup placement and compression settings. SQL Server 2005 brought some great …

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Happy New Year to all! At the start of 2011, I laid out some goals for the year and did an update on them back in July. Now that it's 2012 it's a great time to take a look at what I accomplished (and fell short on) last year and also set some new targets. My 2011 goals were as follows: Speak More – I spoke at two SQL …

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This month's T-SQL Tuesday is hosted by Allen White (blog | @SQLRunr) and is an invitation to show off a nifty T-SQL trick you use to make your job easier. Here's one of my favorites as of late: Some of the source systems we copy from shard their data across multiple similar tables. For example, instead of having 1 …

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The third time's a charm! SQL Saturday #119 (Chicago 2012) has been posted on the SQL Saturday website! It will once again be held at the DeVry University campus in Addison, IL and will be on May 19, 2012. SQL Saturday in Chicago has a special place in my heart for a few reasons. The first SQL Saturday I ever attended …

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