SQLskills Community Mentoring and me

As some of you might be aware Paul Randal (blog | twitter) has just announced the launch of a new SQL Skills Community Mentoring program for a few individuals that took part in the SQL Skills Immersion Events. I’m deeply honored to be one of the select few that get access to invaluable advice from [...]

We are family!

This is the second time I’m writing a post in the  “Meme Monday” series and this time it originates from Tom LaRock (blog | twitter). The topic is : What #SQLfamily means to me.

This weekend I participated in a #SQLfamily reunion in Washington, DC. Some might argue that this is called SQL Saturday #96 [...]

Presenting 2 sessions at SQL Saturday #96 in Washington, DC

I am deeply honored that I was chosen to present 2 sessions at SQL Saturday #96 in Washington, DC this Saturday,   November 5, 2011!

Location is: Microsoft MTC 5404 Wisconsin Ave, Suite 700 Chevy Chase, MD 20815

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Subway: Friendship Heights Metro Station

SQLSaturday is a training event for SQL Server professionals and those [...]

Speaking on SQL Server Algebrizer at SQL Saturday #82 Indianapolis

I was selected to present a session Back to basics – How does the Algebrizer work  has been selected for  SQL Saturday #82 in Indianapolis, IN on Saturday,   June 25, 2011!

Location is: University of Indianapolis-1400 E Hanna Ave Indianapolis, IN 46227 View Larger Map

SQLSaturday is a training event for SQL Server professionals and those [...]

What’s the big difference between Oracle and SQL Server indexes (Part I)

Last week Erin Stellato (blog| twitter) has asked a very interesting question on Twitter that triggered this post:

So how is it you can have good perf in Oracle, w/o IOTs, but in SQL Server, everyone says need CIs for good perf?

There are two aspects to that question

What is the difference between index [...]

Using CONVERT with COLLATE to strip accents from Unicode strings

Today Mladen Prajdic  posted a on Twitter a SQL statement that captured my attention: (http://twitter.com/MladenPrajdic/status/9878219727)

SELECT CONVERT(varchar(50), N’æøåáäĺćçčéđńőöřůýţžš’) COLLATE Cyrillic_General_CI_AI returns aoaaalcccednooruytzs

If you notice the conversion to Cyrillic_General_CI_AI collation his shows an interesting mechanism for code page translation that we could not explain:

Why does Cyrillic_General_CI_AI or   Greek_CI_AI collation successfully convert accents to their base ascii [...]

SQL Azure – Alternative to what

After attending a presentation on SQL Azure by Microsoft’s George Huey an interesting topic came to my mind in regards to the actual use for a cloud based database that has over 1400 incompatibilities with SQL Server: What’s the use for this since it is not a viable alternative to a production database. I would [...]

What three events brought you here?

Recently Paul Randal (aka Mr. Tripp)  started a web version of the tag game in the SQL Server blogging community  on what were the three most important events that shaped your career and got you to this point in your life. It is a very difficult question because unlike data, life events do not accept [...]

Query optimizer pains

As requested by Yavor Angelov from MSFT via Twitter im writing down what seem to to be my biggest pains with QO in SqlServer.

1) Whenever you have a a join between large tables QO will look at the indexes that exists on the join keys. If some indexes are missing it seems that the [...]

Automating encryption tasks with PowerShell

Recently I answered a question on how to automate a task that runs a DTS package, encrypts the result with PGP and then transfers the encrypted file to a FTP site. I became interested in this subject since I heard the same request from 2 people in less than a month and realized that this is a standard pattern for a business process. Extract.Encrypt.Transfer [...]

SQL Server 2008 Failover Clustering with High Availability

I’m heading home from the August session of Chicago PASS and SSUG meeting. First off, this was the biggest meeting in Chicago. Over 80 people signed up and for a very good reason. After a very interesting Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Administration with Windows PowerShell presentation by The MAK and Yan Pan,  Allan Hirt managed [...]

How (not) to design a SQL Server table

I recently saw the worst example of  how not to design a table and indexes in SQL Server.

So here it is:

Table1(UserID,ActivityID,ActivityType,AddDate)

Role : Log any activity that a user is invited for.

PrimaryKey: … Wait for it … tada : UserID,ActivityID,ActivityType,AddDate … Wait you say …. YES … all table columns are used [...]