This month is the (lucky) 13th T-SQL Tuesday and is being hosted by Steve Jones (blog | twitter). Steve is asking about issues we've had interacting with a business in order to get the job done. Specifying project requirements often leads to the classic problem of "do what I meant, not what I said!". In my …

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SQL Saturday #67 (Chicago 2011) has been posted on the SQL Saturday website! Please Join Us! We had an excellent turn out last year, and it's looking like it'll turn out that way again. Registration has been open a little more than a week and we already have over 100 registrations! Our limit is 400, so at the current …

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I'm sure this one's been in SQL Server Management Studio for quite a while, but I never noticed it before now. Let's say you're running a batch in SSMS containing 2 T-SQL Statements. For simplicity's sake, I'll do some selects from my Numbers table: 1SELECT TOP 10 * FROM Numbers; 2SELECT TOP 100 * FROM Numbers; The …

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With Thanksgiving coming up here in the US, I was planning on doing a post like this anyway, but then Jason Strate (blog | twitter) decided to ask everyone, so I'm happy to join in! Thanksgiving is my 2nd favorite holiday (yes, Christmas does take the cake for me). Though it's an American holiday, I like to think that …

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Every Sunday, Michelle and I sit down to brainstorm what we'll be eating for the week ahead. From there, we come up with a shopping list for our weekly grocery shopping that afternoon as well as a menu which goes on the refrigerator. This may seem like overkill, but we've found that not having a menu planned out in …

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Alright, the title of this post is a big fat lie. I would have given my left join to experience the PASS Summit firsthand in Seattle, but it wasn't meant to be this year. Luckily thanks to the magic of teh internetz, I was able to feel like I was there. I'd like to thank two groups of people for making this possible: …

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In my previous post I asked for your votes in the SQLServerPedia Awards, and now I'm happy to say that I won the award in the internals category. I'm so honored – thank you to all who voted! Also thank you to SQLServerPedia for making it all possible and to editors Iain Kick (blog | twitter), Kevin Kline (blog | …

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If this were an actual campaign commercial (in the U.S. at least…) I would now proceed to not say anything about myself and simply bash other people with comments like: So-and-so uses Microsoft Access and likes it My Opponent sets their databases to auto-shrink They somehow get their job done without ever leaving their …

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This month's T-SQL Tuesday comes a week early so it doesn't conflict with the PASS Summit, which makes sense since many active bloggers will be in attendance. Sadly I won't be, but there's always next year! Paul Randal (blog | twitter) is hosting this time around, and the question he's asking is "Why are DBA …

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A while back, honorary SQL geek Sarah Sjolander (blog | twitter) posted her bucket list after watching the movie of the same name. I have yet to see that movie, but thought I'd share my own personal bucket list that (until now) resided only in my head. These items are listed in descending order of the possibility of …

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