PASS Travel Plans, Halloween, Networking Dinner, SQL Dinner & Game Night

Normally I fly out Monday to spend the week at PASS. It’s good to get there early to adjust to the time change, I like to attend the meetings on Tuesday, and of course Monday night is the networking party that Steve Jones & I have organized the last few years. This year I’m flying […]

SQLSaturday Orlando 2017 Goes Live

Today we’re starting on our 11th SQLSaturday here in Orlando. Normally we rotate the leadership between oPASS and MagicPASS, but this year is a bit of change – I’ll be leading this year instead of just contributing. It’s a chance for Shawn and Kendal to take a year breather and a chance for me to give […]

Changing the SQLSaturday Logo?

I read with interest the post from Bob Pusateri that discusses what seems to be the next iteration of the SQLSaturday logo. Informative, calm, and I thought had quite a few valid points. I don’t know that I can be as logical or as calm! Logically, I’d add to the list of concerns the signage […]

Reviewing the 2016 PASS Audited Financials

Notes on items I found interesting in the financial statement, recommend you download and read the entire document. Global Alliance Partner (GAP) dues decreased from $103k to $65k. This doesn’t seem like a lot of money either way, is this program successful? It looks like we lost $40k in foreign currency in 2015. Not sure […]

Murder Data

The Murder Accountability Project is worth a look. It’s a reminder that gathering good data is hard, but once you have the data you can do interesting things – like identify serial killings. The site says 220,000 unsolved homicides in the US since 1980. A big number, but not big data – doesn’t always take […]

ADO Connection Resiliency

It’s not easy to keep up with tech, here’s an update I missed – you can add params to the connection string to enable retries on connections that were established (in the connection pool) but have since failed. I suspect many apps will cover this in the code that handles deadlocks and other SQL errors, […]

Only as Good as Your Auditor

I wrote Only as Good as Your Auditor for SQLServerCentral because its something I’ve explained to people over and over again. For most of us in IT audits are something we tolerate and try to get done as quickly as we can, a test to pass, and because of that we don’t get to see […]

How to Become a SQL Server Database Administrator

I wrote How to Become a SQL Server Database Administrator (email address required for download) a few years ago as a project for Idera, one that I still point people to when they show an interest in the career path. I wish there more of these out there. It would be interesting for anyone thinking about becoming […]

April Fools 2017

Each year I try to something fun for April 1st, though it’s hard to do well. Trying to be funny without crossing any of the many lines we should respect isn’t the easiest thing. Probably the easy target is self – least likely to complain! Still, sometimes there are general topics that those of you […]

Why I’m Changing to MySQLAndy

From time to time we all have to examine our path and decide if we need to make adjustments. Looking at the market, I found a lot of reasons why now is the right time to switch to mySQL. Here’s the top five: 5. I’m going to have to learn Linux anyway. 4. I can use […]