Tomorrow night I'll have the pleasure of speaking at the August 2010 Chicago Suburban SQL Server User Group meeting. Here's the details: WHERE: Microsoft Offices – 3025 Highland Parkway Suite 300, Downers Grove, IL WHEN: Tuesday, August 3, 2010. 6:00 – 9:00 pm I'll be giving my presentation entitled "Backups and …

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Note Picasa Web Albums no longer exists, as that offering has been replaced by Google Photos. I'm leaving this post up for posterity and to show what Picasa Web Albums were like, as well as my opinion of them at that time. This is the fourth post in my series on cloud backup solutions. Previous posts were: Disaster …

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Do you like it when your schemata are easy to understand and maintain? If so, keep the following in mind when choosing names for tables and columns. If you're feeling evil and want to inflict some frustration on others, this might give you some good ideas too…

1. Data types make horrible names There's no rule that says …

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Note Jungle Disk no longer exists, and is now known as Cyber Fortress. I'm leaving this post up for posterity and to show what Jungle Disk was like, as well as my opinion of it at that time. This is the third post in my series on cloud backup solutions. Previous posts were: Disaster Recovery Strategies for the Home A …

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I've seen many articles and blog posts concerning what to do when you have to switch between SQL Server Recovery Models. A lot of these tips are very important, as they can mean the difference between being able to recover your data and the much less desirable opposite. After a lot of web searches on the subject I came …

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Images make just about everything more interesting, which is why I do my best to include at least one with each blog post even if for nothing more than comic relief. I run a few different websites, and a while ago I decided to host the images for all of them in the cloud using Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service). I've …

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AIN'T YOU GOT NO BOOKLEARNIN'? This, the eighth T-SQL Tuesday is hosted by the SQL Soldier, Robert Davis (Blog | Twitter) and he's asking how we learn and how we teach. How I Learned Throughout my school years I seem to have been assigned a disproportionate number of "old-school" teachers who could be …

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And now for something completely different. I realize there's probably been countless thoughts, blog posts and jokes on the subject of elevator etiquette, but I think mine's a little different as it concerns whether or not using the elevator is polite in certain situations. Allow me to explain: In college I spent the …

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Note MozyHome no longer exists. I'm leaving this post up for posterity and to show what it was like, as well as my opinion of it at that time. In a previous post, I talked about disaster recovery strategies for the home and promised reviews on the services I use. Today I'll take a look at Mozy. I've been a satisfied …

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One of the nifty features available in SQL Server 2008 is the "Optimize for Ad hoc Workloads" option, which is at the instance level. If your workload involves a high number of ad hoc queries that are used only once, your plan cache (also known as the "procedure cache") may benefit from enabling …

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