October 2011 - Posts

• Table-valued parameters in SQL 2005

  Can’t be done? Oh, but it can. Let me show you. Just quickly, a Table-Valued Parameter is a useful thing introduced in SQL 2008 that lets you have a read-only parameter which is a table type, passed into a stored procedure. To use it you need to have Read More... Posted Thursday, October 20, 2011 6:59 PM by Rob Farley | 6 Comments

• Highlights and Lowlights of PASS Summit 2011

  This was a proper big week. The PASS Summit ran from Tuesday night to Friday, but I’d arrived in America the Friday before. So by the time it actually started, I had that strange feeling that things were wrapping up. My calendar was ridiculously full. Read More... Posted Wednesday, October 19, 2011 1:23 AM by Rob Farley | 3 Comments Filed under: community, sql, sqlpass

• Supporting Leukemia Research at the Portland Half Marathon

  My company LobsterPot Solutions gives quite a bit to charity. Sometimes it’s working for reduced rates (or even free), but sometimes we give money directly. A Seattle-based friend of mine has CML – one of the types of leukemia, and when I found out she Read More... Posted Wednesday, October 19, 2011 12:21 AM by Rob Farley | 0 Comments Filed under: community, lobsterpot

• I should've looked the other way

  The words for that song I did at the PASS Summit 2011 are as follows. On the Friday, I stopped where the bridge starts. Various recordings of it are making it to YouTube, such as here , where the song starts around 2:20 in. I should've looked the other Read More... Posted Sunday, October 16, 2011 6:08 AM by Rob Farley | 13 Comments Filed under: community, sql, sqlpass

• Data, Information and Knowledge

  Hopefully my connection is slightly better during today’s keynote than it was during yesterday’s, when “Live Blogging” didn’t really cut it. The PASS staff saw the problem and have resolved it (thanks guys!). Quentin Clark has jumped on stage to talk Read More... Posted Friday, October 14, 2011 4:50 AM by Rob Farley | 0 Comments Filed under: community, sql, sql improvements, sqlpass

• Mashing up data

  In the PASS Summit Keynote (Day 1), they’re demonstrating tools to join data from Excel, Marketplace, SQL Azure, using the “Data Explorer”. The thing that I’m liking about this is that you can specify that you want to do a lookup or a merge. Both joins, Read More... Posted Thursday, October 13, 2011 4:32 AM by Rob Farley | 0 Comments

• SQL + Hadoop news

  I’m at the PASS Summit, and announcements are coming out nice and fast. One of the big ones that has just been made is that SQL Server will work much more closely with Apache Hadoop. Amazing stuff, that I think helps people realise that Microsoft is very Read More... Posted Thursday, October 13, 2011 4:07 AM by Rob Farley | 1 Comments Filed under: community, sql, sql improvements, sqlpass

• PASS Summit 2011 – Day 1 Keynote

  I’m a guest blogger again! This trip is already several days old for me. I arrived in America on Friday, delivered two sessions at Portland SQL Saturday event, walked (on Sunday) the Portland Half Marathon as a sponsor of Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Read More... Posted Thursday, October 13, 2011 3:54 AM by Rob Farley | 0 Comments Filed under: community, sql, sqlpass

• Joins without JOIN

  I’m now doing two sessions at the SQL Saturday event in Portland . I had been scheduled to do a single session (on indexes) , but got an email yesterday asking if I could do another one as well. So now I’m going to do a session earlier in the day about Read More... Posted Tuesday, October 04, 2011 2:43 PM by Rob Farley | 7 Comments Filed under: performance, sql, t-sql tuesday