PASS Summit 2020 pre-con time
In 2018, I entered Speaker Idol at the PASS Summit, and because I forgot to start my timer I was disqualified for running over the five-minute limit (say “five-minute limit” fast ten times in a…
sql2xls goes cross-platform
Last year I released sql2xls, a free open-source tool which lets you throw a bunch of scripts into a folder, run them automatically against SQL Server and get the results back in a nicely-formatted Excel…
Speaking at PASS Summit 2019
I am delighted to announce that I have been selected to speak at the largest Microsoft Data Platform conference in the world, PASS Summit 2019, in Seattle WA, USA. As our database community has extended…
A short Azure SQL Edge explainer
On Thursday May 2nd, 2019, Microsoft announced a new edition of SQL Server targeting Internet of Things (IoT) edge devices. That means SQL Server can now run almost anywhere. From the Venturebeat article: It supports…
SQL Saturday 840 in Edmonton next weekend
As I mentioned last month, I will be speaking at SQL Saturday in Edmonton Alberta next weekend. I have been selected to speak for three separate sessions, on the following topics: 10:45 Managing and monitoring…
It’s a UNIX system. I know this.
Jurassic Park was a great film. Steven Spielberg brought technology into the film era in a major way with computer generated dinosaurs and some now-classic film lines, many of which came from Jeff “Dreamboat” Goldblum.…
Does SQL Server 2019 run on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS?
Edit from 19 March 2020: Since the release of CU 3, SQL Server 2019 is officially supported on Ubuntu 18.04, per this blog post. Original post continues below. Yes. Here’s the proof from an output…
Canadian SQL Saturday speaking events
I am pleased to announce that I will be speaking at two separate SQL Saturdays in March and April of this year. The first event is in Victoria (the capital city of British Columbia, located…
Dates and Times in SQL Server: AT TIME ZONE
Continuing the series on dates and times in SQL Server and Azure SQL Database, this week we look at the hint AT TIME ZONE. In Azure SQL Database, the regional settings of the database are…
Repair SQL Server on Linux after an Ubuntu distribution upgrade
SQL Server 2017 is supported on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Long-Term Support), however that version of Ubuntu Linux is now more than two years old, so you may be tempted to update Ubuntu to a more…
Introducing Azure Data Studio
(Last edited on 9 January 2020) Note: This was originally written for the book SQL Server 2017 Administration Inside Out, but did not meet the publishing deadline. A revised version is now included in the…
A trillion and one
Joe Obbish wrote an epic post a few weeks ago about loading a trillion rows into a non-partitioned table in SQL Server, using a clustered columnstore index to maximise the compression. (Short version: it’s very…
SQL Server 2017 Announced
By now you will have heard that the next version of SQL Server has been announced. There’s no release date yet, but Brent Ozar seems to think it’ll be before June. There are many new features,…