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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Well, we're back at the top of the month again, and this time around for Meme Monday we're to talk about what we'd love to see under the tree from Microsoft. This got my creative juices flowing, and I came up three wishes:

First and foremost, if I had one wish that I could wish this holiday season, it would be that all …

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As a follow-up to my previous post about the steps you may have to go through to attend training if your employer can't or won't offer assistance in the form of either money or time off, I have a story of my own to tell. I was unhappy at my previous place of work for several reasons, a few of which I've blogged about …
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In honor of today being the last day to get the special preview rate for the 2012 PASS Summit, I thought I'd offer some tips on negotiating with your boss for money to attend such a conference or training event. For more info about registration, click here.

Keeping up to date in the technology world is a journey, not …

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This month brings us the 24th edition of T-SQL Tuesday (24 already? wow….). This time around our topic comes from Brad Schulz (blog) and has to do with stored procedures and functions. Brad's asking us to write whatever we'd like about either of them.

While from the bird's-eye view both functions (the table-valued …

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This is the second time I've participated in the "Meme Monday" blog events that have been brought to us by Tom LaRock (blog | @SQLRockstar). The topic is on what "SQL Family" means to us. A few things popped into my head as soon as I read it, and I'm happy to share them:

First and foremost …
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