Becoming a Senior DBA
My life in the work force began like many others, as a waiter at a Greek restaurant in my home town, Newtown, CT. After graduating from high school I ran off to join the Navy so that I could afford…
Broken ownership chain – Dynamic SQL
Today I had a co-worker come to my desk wondering why his service was getting a permissions error when selecting from a table. His confusion was rooted in the fact that his service has been using this stored procedure for…
Don’t feed the monkeys 3 ways to help people solve their own problems
I have struggled to learn how to stop feeding the monkeys for quite some time. I’m happy to see that commitment is being listed as a major factor here. I find lack of commitment to be far more common then…
SQL Server 2012 SP2 released
Microsoft SQL Server 2012 SP2 is now available Build number: 11.0.5058.0 Microsoft SQL Server 2012 service packs are cumulative updates and upgrade all editions and service levels of SQL Server 2012 to SP2. This service pack contains up to and including…
Information Technology: Minimum requirements
I’ve been asked, several times, what skills a person should work on if they wanted to enter the IT field. The specific question changes depending upon if the question was targeted at DBA, developer, systems administrator, or testing skills. When…
Update zero base column to one base
Problem: A co-worker requested help with a query today… Derik, I have an Email table with a list of email addresses per person record. There is an ordinal column that is base zero but I decided to make the index in the…
What happened to the SQL Hammer?
Two months ago I accepted a new position as a Data Architect / Developer (SQL and .NET). I accepted the position partially due to my passion for database design and partially as a means to expand my knowledge base. I’m attempting…
April SQL Server Updates
SQL Server 2014 Cumulative Update #1 is Available Microsoft has released Cumulative Update #1 for SQL Server 2014. KB Article: KB #2931693 114 fixes listed at time of publication (121 total) Build number is 12.0.2342 Relevant for @@VERSION 12.0.2000 through 12.0.2341…
FILESTREAM garbage collection with AlwaysOn Availability Groups
It seems that, of the DBAs who use FILESTREAM, it is common to ask, “why do I have more file system objects then I have rows with BLOB columns?” This question inevitably bring us to the topic of the garbage…
SQL Server 2014 RTM – Release Date
Today, Microsoft announced that SQL Server 2014 RTM will be generally available on April 1st, 2014. In addition to this wonderful piece of information; Quentin Clark (Corporate Vice President, Data Platform Group), Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and COO Kevin Turner…