Blogs

Connecting to the SQL Server Community Online: Uplifting Folks

March 23, 2020

We’ve got a session coming up in the free Redgate Streamed virtual conference on, “How database DevOps levels up remote work.” When thinking about that session I began thinking about other ways to improve remote work. While I worked remotely for nearly ten years until recently and have established practices which work well for me , moving to another country and the general chaos and uncertainty right now as the world tries to cope with a global pandemic have increased my feelings of worry and loneliness.

Outlining My Session: Index Tuning in an Agile World

in sql

March 20, 2020

I’m giving a session on index tuning at the upcoming Redgate Streamed free online conference. The conference will be held April 1-3 2020, register here and join us!

I love talking about index tuning and I know this area well, so I’m excited to put together this new session. I thought it would be fun to share my process of outlining and creating the session, leading up to the event.

Announcing Redgate Streamed, April 1-3 2020

in sql

March 19, 2020

We’re thrilled to announce Redgate Streamed: a 3 day online virtual community conference, to be held April 1-3, 2020. Register at Redgate.com/RedgateStreamed In this 9 minute livestream, I give you a rundown of the event schedule and tells you why I’m excited about each session. For every registration that attends Redgate streamed, live or on-demand, we’ll donate $1 to the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 response fund (in addition to a separate donation we’ll be making.

The Learner’s Guide to SQL Server Performance Triage

in sql

March 19, 2020

I’m introducing a series of “learner’s guides” – overviews of a given topic, chock full of links and references. For this first post, the information is based on what I learned when I was part of the team at Brent Ozar Unlimited who put together the original First Responder Kit and built a related consulting practice using those tools.

Why Re-teaming is Good

in sql

March 13, 2020

Note: This post is based on an editorial I originally published over at SQL Server Central Years ago, I worked on a fabulous team of eight database administrators We supported more than a hundred developers who worked in an agile fashion. When I first joined the DBA team, we had a shared on-call rotation, but each DBA specialized in a certain area of the environment and regularly met with the development teams working on that area.

Altering an indexed view in SQL Server drops all indexes

in sql

March 2, 2020

I learned an interesting thing about ALTER VIEW behavior in SQL Server when applied to indexed views. This is covered in the product documentation, but it’s not something I would have expected: ALTER VIEW can be applied to indexed views; however, ALTER VIEW unconditionally drops all indexes on the view. ALTER VIEW documentation When I first heard about this behavior, it sounded like a bug to me: why should an alteration like adding a column to a view remove all the indexes?

Come work with me! Be a Sales Engineer for Redgate

in sql

February 21, 2020

Redgate is growing, and we have some fresh, new open positions around the world which would be a great fit for SQL Server developers or DBAs who would like to transition to a customer-facing role and develop expertise in Redgate’s solutions for Compliant Database DevOps. Here are the listings and locations for three of these roles:

We can do better

in sql

February 13, 2020

In the past week or so, the Microsoft Data Platform community has begun having a discussion about inclusivity, both on Twitter and across community blog posts.

This conversation began when a member of the community shared their story about being repeatedly mis-gendered and additionally feeling excluded, unwelcome, and hurt at a series of community events.

Protect Your Prod Databases in Azure DevOps / TFS: Three Control Points

in devops, sql

February 5, 2020

When implementing any kind of automation for database deployments, it’s important to implement safeguards for your production environment. This is needed even in the best conditions when team members collaborate well and there is a high level of trust, for a very simple reason: accidents happen easily!

High Availability options for SQL Server 2008 in an Azure VM - a #sqlhelp story

in sql

February 1, 2020

I asked a question on Twitter yesterday: “If running SQL Server 2008 in an Azure VM (no SQL upgrade possible, extended support in place), is the best option for high availability Database Mirroring? Or something else I am not thinking of? #sqlhelp”