Blogs

Why To Do Some of the Grunt Work

Part of this past week I’ve spent doing a new SQL Server 2008 R2 installation and configuration on a Windows 2008 R2 cluster. I  haven’t done an install end-to-end in quite a while– I have teammates who take care of it while following our installation checklist document.

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Error Configuring DataCollector: A collection set cannot start without a schedule

When setting up data collection using the GUI, configuration failed halfway through setup. At the point  of failure I found there were SQL Agent jobs for collections visible, but nothing appearing  in Management Studio under Management\Data Collection. The Data Collection icon still had the ‘off’ down red arrow. (I manually refreshed it for good measure to make sure.)

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Change Data Capture vs Change Tracking

Here is a quick taxonomy of Change Data Capture and Change Tracking. I’m going to keep this short, but if you really want all the details, skip to the links at the bottom for complete information.

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DBA Checklists: Check out Free OneNote in Office Live

OneNote in Office online makes it easy to create and share notebooks with many checklists. The checklists include version tracking.

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Haikus for SQL Saturday #43

SQL Saturday #43 was held in Redmond, Washington on June 12. It was tons of fun: great sessions, lots of interesting people to meet, and a well organized day where everything happened on time as if by magic.

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DBAs Needed on Microsoft Connect

Update from Kendra (2018)** - Microsoft Connect has been retired. The current feedback system is here: https://feedback.azure.com/forums/908035-sql-server

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SQL Server 2008/2008R2: My Favorite Feature

1. My New Crush: PowerPivot When it comes to R2, PowerPivot is the big charmer for me. It’s as much fun as my spiralizer, and that’s saying a lot. If you don’t know what a spiralizer is, it’s a magical little piece of plastic with a few blades that lets you turn a zuchinni into super long curly strands of veggie pasta, which makes it suddenly more than normal squash. You can also make curly fries, slice onions, and do all sorts of crazy cool things a normal person can’t make with an ordinary kitchen knife.

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The Art of Abstraction: SQL PASS Submissions

I have been plotting sessions that I’d like to present at SQL PASS for a little while now, and the June 5 deadline is approaching. Since I’m on vacation this week, I took some time to write up my abstracts. Man, oh man, that was more work than I thought! Condensing ideas into 1000 characters or less and still saying all you want to say isn’t as easy as it seems.

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What is Filling up Your System Drive? Why I Still Love SpaceMonger 1.4.0

As for all posts on this blog, this post provides no guarantees for the tools described: use at your own risk, and make sure to test all functionality. This came to mind recently just because I wondered– is there any other free tool that does this better?

Times change, but some things stay the same.

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Little Things That Count: Copying Names in Management Studio

This post is about a really little detail that isn’t a big deal.

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