Merrill Aldrich

Telecommuting, Month 9

merrillaldrich — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 22:51:00 GMT

Five Things I’ve Learned About Surviving the Telecommute Over the past several years my wife and I went through this strange series of events where we swapped work roles – first she worked remotely for a Minnesota company, from our home in Seattle, and...(read more)

Speaking in Chicago Saturday

merrillaldrich — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 16:03:36 GMT

I’m excited to be offering a beginning PowerShell session at SQL Saturday #211 in Chicago on Saturday, April 13. This time we’re making it a family weekend, bringing our two boys. I haven’t been to Chicago for many years, and it’s, of course, an Architecture...(read more)

SSMS 2012 Restore GUI Gotcha

merrillaldrich — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 16:30:07 GMT

Today I want to bring to your attention an issue in the SQL Server Management Studio 2012 restore GUI. In many ways the new restore dialog is nicer than the old one, with new features and added convenience – but, as is always the Achilles heel of GUI...(read more)

T-SQL Tuesday #040: Files, Filegroups and Visualizing Interleaved Objects

merrillaldrich — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 05:08:52 GMT

Early in my career as a DBA, I have to admit I didn’t quite “get” what all the fuss was about with the multiple file and multiple filegroup capability in SQL Server. Over the years, though, as I learned more about partitioning, backup strategies for large...(read more)

Presenting to East Iowa I-380 U.G. March 12

merrillaldrich — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 03:13:11 GMT

Tomorrow I’m making the beautiful drive down from Minneapolis into Iowa to present to the I-180 / East Iowa SQL Server Users Group . I’ll be talking about managing lots and lots of unruly databases, and presenting a walkthrough of this maintenance solution...(read more)

March Update to Rules-Driven Maintenance

merrillaldrich — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 02:56:00 GMT

This month I have a minor update to the Rules-Driven Maintenance code I originally posted back in August 2012. This update has just two enhancements, but they are nice ones, I think: Much improved handling for instances that use database snapshots. Ability...(read more)

Trigger Authoring Decision Tree

merrillaldrich — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 18:46:09 GMT

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Public Release, SQL Server File Layout Viewer

merrillaldrich — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 21:36:00 GMT

Version 1.0 is Now Available! I’ve been working off and on, as my real job permits, on this visualization tool for SQL Server data files. This is an educational or exploratory tool where you can more readily see how the individual data pages in MDF/NDF...(read more)

Presenting for PASSMN User Group Feb. 19

merrillaldrich — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 23:09:31 GMT

I’m pleased to be presenting the talk “Shoveling Frogs into a Wheelbarrow” for my new hometown user group PASSMN on February 19, 2013. Come on down if you’re in the Twin Cities. This talk is close to my heart, as it shows how I grew from a younger, greener...(read more)

OT Le Casque Zik de Parrot Totally Biased Review (Zik Headphones)

merrillaldrich — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 23:40:36 GMT

I’m not a complete gadget freak, but sometimes a widget draws me in and pushes that gadget-lust button. Such was the case last year when Philippe Starck and the French bluetooth device maker Parrot announced a collaboration to make what are probably the...(read more)

Visualizing Data File Layout III

merrillaldrich — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 05:45:50 GMT

This is part three of a blog series illustrating a method to render the file structure of a SQL Server database into a graphic visualization. Previous Installments: Part 1 Part 2 Those that have been reading this series might be be thinking, “Is he going...(read more)

Visualizing Data File Layout II

merrillaldrich — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 23:40:02 GMT

Part 2 of a blog series visually demonstrating the layout of objects on data pages in SQL Server Part 1 In Part 1 of this series, I introduced a little demo app that renders the layout of pages in SQL Server files by object. Today I’ll put that app through...(read more)

Visualizing Data File Layout I

merrillaldrich — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 22:50:34 GMT

Part 1 of a blog series visually demonstrating the layout of objects on data pages in SQL Server Some years ago a gentleman called Danny Gould created a free tool called Internals Viewer for SQL Server . I’m a visual sort of guy, and I always thought...(read more)

Update to Rules-Driven Maintenance

merrillaldrich — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 18:34:00 GMT

Back in August I posted a first version of a rules-driven solution for backups, index and statistics maintenance and integrity checks. The system in general has been working well, and has saved my team a huge amount of time and effort. We are coming to...(read more)

Updated Warehouse Re-Index Script

merrillaldrich — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 00:30:00 GMT

As I talked about in my last post , I just went through a re-indexing project that took the partitioned fact rows from our warehouse and relocated them into new files. There are a lot of tables and indexes involved, so I have a PowerShell “helper” script...(read more)