I’m all like:

Because I saw this on an eval:

I’ve been trying to ramp up to take advantage of my MSDN subscription and haven’t known where to start. I don’t have that excuse now.

And then I was all like:

Because:

We are moving a lot of stuff to…

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Thank you to everyone that attended my webinar with the PASS Excel BI Virtual Chapter today! I’d also like to thank Thomas LeBlanc for having me to present. I had a great time presenting on the newest features of Power BI and what features you will see in the near… Read more

Database Mirroring in SQL Server is deployed as a method to increase the availability of a SQL Server database in the event of a disaster. It can only be implemented in databases that have full recovery model and works on per-database basis. In database mirroring, two copies of a single… Read more

I had a query to use xp_logininfo to pull group membership chains - that is, DOMAIN\Andy has access, but not directly - DOMAIN\Andy has access because he is a member of DOMAIN\DBAGroup.…

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Time flies. I didn’t notice that I hadn’t posted an update in February.

There’s been a lot going on since I last posted! I’ve attended the executive committee meetings. I’ve also hosted my first board meetings and I took part in my first Town Hall. I’ve been working with PASS… Read more

I’ve been playing around with partitioning quite a lot recently and wanted to write a quick post about how it can help you out in a DR situation.

Partitioning is mainly for increasing the manageability of your data but it also has other benefits, one of them being giving you… Read more

The very first SQLSaturday in Belgium is over and it was a great event. I saw some interesting sessions, especially the one on refreshing data in Power BI was very interesting. There was a nice turnout and the event was well organized. I look forward to the second edition!

You… Read more

Is being on time important? I think that might be a revealing interview question. The answer might or might not be a deal breaker depending on the hiring manager or the culture, but just hearing how they answer offers some interesting insight into how they see the world.

The comments… Read more

The agenda for this year’s SQLBITs has been published you can find it here  http://sqlbits.com/information/event15/Agenda.aspx?20160507

Our very own David Postlethwaite has been selected to give one of his talks.

Congratulations to David on getting selected to speak at the event.

The event takes place in Liverpool between 4^th –…

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Im not a big clustering/HA expert, but I obviously understand the need for such things to exist

However, the standard SQL tooling, SSMS etc, seems to go out of its way to make the MultiSubNetFailover option as inaccessible and convoluted as possible.  Quite why this option even exists and its… Read more

After I posted this blog MDX Cookbook is a popular book, I received another email from my MDX book publisher.

Hi Sherry,

Hope all is well with you.

Considering the enormous response we received for the last promotional campaign that ended on 12th March, would you be willing to…

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We use NON EMPTY key word on the rows axis to remove rows with NULL values. It works only when all the measures are NULL. If any one of the measures has value, NON EMPTY key word will not be able to remove rows.

NON EMPTY on rows axis worked…

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By Steve Bolton

…………“The names statisticians use for non-parametric analyses are misnomers too, in my opinion: Kruskal-Wallis tests and Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistics, for example. Good grief! These analyses are simple applications of parametric modeling that belie their intimidating exotic names.”[i]
                Apparently even experts like Will G. Hopkins, the author of… Read more

I submitted my letter just a few minutes ago. It’s a template, doesn’t take more than 5 minutes to fill out and send in. I’m curious to see if we have more volunteers this year than in previous years with the streamlined requirements.

 

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Another post for me that is simple and hopefully serves as an example for people trying to get blogging as #SQLNewBloggers.

I got asked a question about the OUTPUT clause recently and realized I didn’t remember the syntax. I’ve rarely used this, so I had to look it… Read more

Azure SQL Data Warehouse (SQL DW) is a new platform-as-a service (PaaS) that distributes workloads across multiple compute resources, called massively parallel processing (MPP).  Loading data into a MPP data warehouse requires a different approach, or mindset, than traditional methods of loading data into a SMP data warehouse.

To help… Read more

Tomorrow (3/24/2016) at noon CT I’ll be presenting my SQL Server Security Basics session for the Pass Security Virtual Chapter. If you are interested in SQL Server database security and have little to no experience with it then this is the session for you! Heck even if you do… Read more

Last week I received an email from one of our sysadmins asking why one of our databases kept showing as ‘In Recovery’.

The database in question wasn’t stuck in recovery, it would slip in and out of the status throughout the day. Normally, I would only ever expect to see… Read more

Color coordination is important in report and dashboard design.  We’ve seen theming and color pallet options in the prior iteration of Power BI but this is not yet a feature in the new version. No doubt, the product will continue to move forward.  You can, however, use individual color selections…

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It’s coming in May. The official UK SQL Server 2016 launch event is SQL Bits and the conference returns to Liverpool on May 4-7.  With a fun theme.

Check out the launch video here: SQLBits XV

Update (Mar 24): The agenda is live. I’m speaking Saturday at 2:30pm.

There… Read more