Yesterday I presented at SQL Saturday #162. My slide deck and samples are here:     Slide Deck & Samples: Bertrand - T-SQL Bad Habits & Best Practices I also wanted to answer a question from an audience member after the session about how to generate YYYYMMDD strings to represent yesterday's date in order to append to a backup ...

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 ...

Later this week I will be doing an episode of the Greg Low’s excellent SQL Down Under podcast (http://www.sqldownunder.com/Resources/Podcast.aspx), something I did once before back in 2006.  If you haven’t listened to any of the previous editions, there are some amazing people who have been on his podcast. On Thursday at 12:00 Central Time, ...

Update: I will not be able to attend SQL Saturday 158 due to illness. - Andy  I am honored to present two sessions at SQL Saturday #158 in New York City this Saturday (4 Aug 2012)! I am delivering two sessions: Designing an SSIS Framework and Loading the Cloud. It is also very cool to see the Linchpin People logo on the Sponsors ...

One more week until we get to SQL Saturday 122 in Louisville KY. I have a couple of sessions on the calendar this time. First, the one on Sequences: ------------------------------------ What Sequence objects are (and are not) SQL Server 2012 adds a new object to our arsenal called a sequence that can will give us the capability to implement ...

I've been to a lot of SQL Saturdays. They are great events to attend - from a community standpoint, from a learning standpoint, and from a speaker growth standpoint. Who could ask for more, right? Great sessions, from passionate speakers willing to both teach and learn, fantastic networking opportunities and lunch. All for free, or at a very low ...

A lot of my time lately has been spent getting ready for next week and I hope to see you there.  First up SQL Rally. On Wednesday, I will be doing a pre-con session on Database Design. I have already blogged about it here, and I am definitely excited about it.  There are still seats available, and I will be giving away a few goodies ...

Another year, another fantastic Atlanta SQL Saturday. Hats off to the team that created the event for delivering a top notch day for the attendees. Thanks to everyone who attended my ''Query Tuning Mastery: The Art and Science of Manhandling Parallelism'' session. Demos are attached. Enjoy, and I'll see you at the next one!

Well, 8 days not including lead and lag travel time. A quick summary of the three events, and the flights it took to get me to each: SQL Saturday #105 - Dublin, Ireland Flights on March 21st:Providence -> Philadelphia (236 miles)Philadelphia -> Dublin (3,260 miles)Time zone change: +4 when we got there, plus Daylight Saving Time kicked ...

I am excited to co-present A Day of SSIS at the Atlanta SQL Saturday #111 13 Apr 2012! The SQL Saturday event will be Saturday 14 Apr 2012, but the precons (there are three!) will be Friday 13 Apr 2012. Matt Masson (Blog | @mattmasson) is co-presenting. If you have never had the opportunity to listen to Matt talk about SSIS, you should. Matt is ...