This week's PASS Summit Tip is all about food. And with all the learning and networking opportunities you'll find there, you're going to need a lot of it! Have you ever been to a wedding where the food is just "meh"? It's edible, but nothing great. You can't blame the happy couple for it, because they're …

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This Month's T-SQL Tuesday is hosted by Jeff Mlakar, and he has asked for us to tell the tale of a project that went horribly wrong. This will be short, but it's one of my favorite stories of a project that wasn't totally thought through. I (thankfully) wasn't part of the team for this, but the way word spreads in IT, …

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This PASS Summit tip is all about power. Electricity. Inconveniencing electrons for your own personal benefit. If you're attending a tech conference, chances are really good you'll have multiple computing devices with you, and each of those devices will need power. And if you're like me, you'll be doing plenty of …

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I've been honored to present a session at PASS Summit for the past few years, but this year I am especially humbled as I had not one but two abstracts accepted! The first is an introduction to Azure Cosmos DB. The other is covering some of my favorite SSMS and T-SQL tips and tricks that can help you save time! Select …

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The next in my series of PASS Summit Tips may seem a bit strange, but I assure you it comes from experience: Parts of PASS Summit can be loud. My handy-dandy earplugs I'm not referring to the official events themselves; if you're in a session and feel it's too loud, maybe take a seat farther away from a speaker. What …

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I'm always looking for new and interesting data sets for demonstration purposes. I enjoy using data that people can relate to – not only is it easily understood, but often it can be entertaining as well. This data set of real-world parking tickets does all that. A few weeks ago I came across this blog post by Matt …

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Last week I wrote about SQL Saturday Portland and the SQLTrain. In this week's PASS Summit tip I have another piece of advice for attendees: Get the session recordings. Yes, I know they cost extra. And no, I am not blindly playing PASS marketing cheerleader here. There's actually some really solid reasons to purchase …

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I'm very happy to be returning to Boston this weekend to speak at SQL Saturday Boston 2018. I last attended a few years ago and have been wanting to get back there ever since, so I'm happy the cards fell into place this time around! The organizers in Boston have put together an amazing schedule for the day that I'm …

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It dawned upon me the other day that this will be my seventh year attending PASS Summit, and I'm pretty fortunate to have been able to attend so many times. Over the years, I have also acquired some knowledge about the event and how to prepare for it that may be helpful for others. So this year, I hope to share a few …

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I am very happy to be returning to the [Chicago Suburban SQL Server User Group][2] next week! …Except I won't exactly be talking about SQL Server. Instead I will be speaking about [Azure Cosmos DB][1], a relatively new cloud offering that, while different from SQL Server, is quickly proving to be extremely important in …

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