MVP No More

Back in September I received a call from my MVP lead that I wasn’t being renewed. Not a big surprise, though still a disappointment. The program has changed a lot since I joined in 2008 and today has much more focus on “data platform” than just SQL Server (where I continue to focus). I’ve also […]

Retrieving the SQL Server License Key

Strangely enough its been a long time since I installed SQL in production. It’s almost always done by someone on the server team and that’s fine with me, clicking the wizard (or running the install script) isn’t the interesting part. Today though, I needed to add a named instance (also rare) and didn’t have the […]

Use 100% Fill Factor on Insert Only Tables

SQL Server has the concept of fill factor for leaving extra space in pages to reduce the number of page splits. If you picture library shelves, it’s like leaving space for a couple new books on each shelf. It’s a trade-off though, putting in that space may reduce page splits but it increases the number […]

Insufficient Space to Create Databases For SCOM 2012 R2

Ran into a minor issue while installing SCOM. The wizard wants to create two databases. The first requires a minimum size of 1000mb and a log of 50% of that – call it 1.5g, and the same for the second one. We made it through the first database config step, but on the second one […]

Fixing SCOM After a Hardware Upgrade

Quick note in case I need again some day. The team recently moved all the user databases for a monitoring instance to new hardware and it basically went well. Immediately afterward there were a number of error messages in the log about a missing user defined error message. Minus 5 points for not moving MSDB. […]

Renewed as MVP for 2015

Took a break to check email and saw the confirmation that I was renewed for another year. Pleasant news for a Wednesday morning. Strange to realize this is my 7th time, where did the time go? I’ve certainly changed a lot in those years! For those who aren’t MVP’s and would like to be (and […]

SSIS Lessons Learned, Or Not, And Mistakes Beginners Make

It’s been a while since I’ve used SSIS for anything of substantial complexity, and a lot longer than that since I went through the SSIS class that Brian Knight taught back when we were in the training business together. Recently I had a chance to take on a small project with some twists and it’s […]

Wishing For Error Messages That Are Good Search Terms

Here’s a SQL error you might get: not able to access the database “SomeDB” under the current security context. If you don’t know what the error means (and none of us will understand all the errors we see), you copy/paste it into the search engine of your choice and hope that the “someDB” part doesn’t […]

An Sp_addrolemember Gotcha

Over the past few months there have been a handful of times when I had to fix a security problem by granting connect to the user. It wasn’t a big deal so I put it on the ‘figure out later’ list. Today it happened again and I had some time, so I took a deeper […]

Interest In SQL Server Seems To Be Declining?

Amusing myself for a minute at Google Trends. Anyone missing 2005?