For all members of the Professional Association for Server (PASS), are you downloading slides and videos from all sorts of great PASS events?  If not, what are you waiting for ... an invitation?Ok, here it is.  I invite you to download like a madman!  (How a madman downloads, an almost entirely virtual activity, is not the ...

Here's a quick tip for you:During some restore operations on Microsoft SQL Server, the transaction log redo step might be taking an unusually long time.  Depending somewhat on the version and edition of SQL Server you've installed, you may be able to increase performance by tinkering with the readahead performance for the redo operations. ...

Ok, I have to admit the painful truth. I'm reliably slow to the finish line. This year, I got my slides into PASS HQ by the skin of my teeth, the weekend before the event was to begin.  Although I could say with a straight face ''I uploaded my slides!''.  I have to be honest that I wasn't surprised when many of my attendees said that ...

One of the most positive experiences I can have, as a former leader of the PASS organization, is when I see a neophyte become a passionate support and champion for the community. On my first day in Seattle, before the event had even begun, I was stopped several by people who'd attended their first PASS Summit last year. But this year, they were ...

Click this link to register: http://www.houseofbrick.com/education/sqlserverbootcamp/Registration. Presented by my buddy, David Klee at House of Brick, one of the nations top VMWare consultancies specializing in Oracle and SQL Server deployments. David has a great write-up of this boot camp ...

The PerfMon Counters That Just Won't DieOne of the things that's simultaneously great and horrible about the Internet is that once something gets posted out in the ether, it basically never goes away.  (Some day, politicians will realize this.  We can easily fact check their consistency).  Because of longevity of content posted to ...

It's always a feel-good experience for me to return to SQL Saturday in Orlando, the place where SQL Saturdays  were started by Andy Warren (Twitter | Blog).  On this trip, I delivered a full-day, pre-conference seminar on Troubleshooting and Performance Tuning SQL Server.  I also delivered a session on SQL Server ...

Relational?!? Move On, Geezer!Maybe you're thinking that relational databases management systems (RDBMSs), like Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle, are going the way of punched cards and rotary phones.  After all, there's been a lot of hype these days in the IT media about the rise of so-called NoSQL (Not Only SQL) databases. ...

PASS SQL Saturdays are free 1-day training events for IT professionals interested in Microsoft SQL Server, providing a variety of high-quality technical sessions, all happen through the efforts of local volunteers.  The leadership team of the local chapter of PASS here in Nashville (Facebook | LinkedIn) have ...

I had the honor of traveling the great state of Colorado last week, speaking at the PASS chapters in Boulder, Colorado Springs, and Denver.  At all three events, we had a stellar attendance and, at least in Denver, broke all the records in recent memory both in terms of overall attendance and in first-timers. ...