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Dealing with rejection
“Dear speaker This serves as notice that your session submission was not selected for our upcoming event. We had a lot of sessions to sort through, and unfortunately there were not enough spots available to take everyone. Please submit for next year. The conference organizers” I’m a user group leader, a former SQL Saturday organizer,
-> Continue reading Dealing with rejection
I’m a DBA. Do I really need to know Kubernetes?
Welcome to February 2020. It’s the second month of the year 2020! I remember sitting at a server with SQL Server 6.5 installed on it, worrying about the Y2K bug. It feels like yesterday. While I haven’t been a database administrator for all that time between then and now, I have been exposed to broad
-> Continue reading I’m a DBA. Do I really need to know Kubernetes?
What is a strong password anyway?
Background Fellow Microsoft MVP Troy Hunt (blog | Twitter) has been operating the website Have I Been Pwned (HIBP) for a number of years now. For the record, “pwned” is pronounced like “owned” but with a “p” in front of it. Don’t use the term in public unless you’re in a room full of information security
-> Continue reading What is a strong password anyway?
My home office setup
That aging hippie (he likes Apple products and has a goatee) known as Brent Ozar wrote a post recently about his home office studio setup, with a big focus on bragging about his admittedly really nice Mac Pro online training. I don’t do online training, but for some reason there’s a lot of interest in
-> Continue reading My home office setup
Don’t install SQL Server from a mounted ISO
Here’s something that seems to keep coming up, but not frequently enough for me to write a blog post about until now: You should not install SQL Server from a mounted ISO file. Instead, you should extract the contents of the ISO file first before installing it. In June 2019 I tweeted: […] some ISO
-> Continue reading Don’t install SQL Server from a mounted ISO
The curious case of the sqlcmd password
In August last year I posted about a command line parser problem I ran into with AzCopy, which I eventually resolved by writing a batch file and escaping a number of characters in the access token. A week ago, my friend and colleague Steve Stedman (blog | Twitter) came to me with a similar problem
-> Continue reading The curious case of the sqlcmd password
Looking ahead to 2020
This week all I want to say is Happy New Year, and may 2020 be the start of a successful decade for you. Live, love, learn. Remember to take some time off to play. Thank you for continuing to read my ramblings.
Temporal Tables, and how to deal with computed columns
Long time readers will know I’m a big fan of Temporal Tables since their introduction in SQL Server 2016. Thanks to my friend Erik Darling (blog | Twitter), I can share a tip when dealing with computed columns. As I say in my Back to the future with Temporal Tables session, there are several limitations
-> Continue reading Temporal Tables, and how to deal with computed columns
Compression in SQL Server: COMPRESS and DECOMPRESS
On Twitter recently, I asked: Does anyone I know use the COMPRESS and DECOMPRESS features in T-SQL? To those who replied in the affirmative, I asked: What made you decide on this as opposed to ROW or PAGE compression? Joey D’Antoni (blog | Twitter), one of my co-authors, reminded me that row and page compression do
-> Continue reading Compression in SQL Server: COMPRESS and DECOMPRESS
A guide to acronyms, abbreviations, and other technical terms
Here’s a list of some technical terms, acronyms, and abbreviations you may have heard, and what they mean. Some of the definitions are taken from Wikipedia. This list is incomplete. It’s also not in alphabetical order. Mainframe: on-demand computing resources, usually paid for using a subscription model Distributed computing: distributed system components connected by a
-> Continue reading A guide to acronyms, abbreviations, and other technical terms