This Month's T-SQL Tuesday is being hosted by Pat Wright (blog | twitter) and Pat is asking about tips and tricks for making life easier through automation using either T-SQL or PowerShell. Recently I have been doing more and more work in PowerShell in order to get familiar with it. So far I've been quite happy. Batch …

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This month is the 14th T-SQL Tuesday (my how time flies!) and it's graciously being hosted by MidnightDBA and newly-minted MVP Jen McCown (blog | twitter). Jen is asking what our techie resolutions are for 2011 – what we hope to accomplish and why. I think this is a great topic, and I'm so glad I hadn't already done a …

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What do you call someone who graduated last in their class? In this case, me! I recently took Microsoft Exam 70-433 (MCTS: Database Developer 2008), and am pleased to report that I passed. I'm happy to offer up some of my thoughts as well as tips for those who might take it in the future. Scoring – Why Bother? So you …

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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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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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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 long time ago I can remember wondering what happens when you try to update a value by setting it equal to itself – whether the database engine will actually carry out the update or just ignore it. At the time I didn't think much of it, but it popped into my head again last week and I decided to find out. I'm sure I'm …

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This Month’s T-SQL Tuesday topic comes from Sankar Reddy (twitter) and he’s asking for SQL Server myths and misconceptions to be de-bunked. I’ve got 2 myths I’d like to set the record straight about. They’re rather closely related, and concern the "Lock Pages in Memory" setting. What’s it do? Without getting into an …

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