Recall back in January 2011 that I profiled the cool tool, FineBuild for SQL Server, which helps you configure and quickly deploy installations of SQL Server. Not only does FineBuild help you install a new SQL Server using the settings and configuration options you desire, it goes a few steps further by ensuring that any additional programs, ...

When you're developing new Transact-SQL code or modifying some existing code, do you just launch directly into programming? I know that I did just that, for years. It wasn't until I was trying to performance tune some existing code that I realized I hadn't actually taken caching of data and execution plans into account. So all those modified ...

I've had enough time off from traveling after my surgery to finally travel again.  First on the circuit , set for August 27th, is Omaha, Nebraska and SQL Saturday #91.  As a former Crimson Tide alum, I was stoked about going to the University of Nebraska, our once and future rivals on the Grid Iron.  But after a moment's ...

In last month's column, ''2012 Might Really Be the End of the World as We Know It,'' I described a number of major developments in the IT industry that are likely to disrupt the life of database professionals everywhere.  I categorize those four disruptors - virtualization, cloud computing, solid state drives (SSD), and advanced ...

Back when my day-to-day duties included database administration work and enterprise architecture, I became rather obsessed with the idea of operational excellence. I read everything I could on the topic. I made a list of favorites, which became somewhat shabby over time, as I dog-eared important pages and scribbled notes in the margins. ...

A little over a month ago, I wrote an article (Is There Such a Thing as Easy ETL) about expressor software and their desktop ETL application, expressor Studio. I wrote about how it seemed much easier than the native ETL tools in SQL Server when I was reading up on the tool, but that the ''proof would be in the pudding'' so to speak when I ...

Check out the new white paper “Key Methods for Managing Complex DB Environments” at Quest.com. Heterogeneous database management hassles used to be much less common than today. When I first started at Quest nearly ten years ago, I'd put forward that on 15-20% of my big customers regularly managed more than one major database platform. (That ...

      In this podcast on the uber-popular podcast ''RunAs Radio'', host Richard Campbell asks me about what topics are of particular interest at Tech-Ed 2011, focusing the discussion on cloud and SQL Server ''Denali'' You can download the MP3 version of the podcast or the transcript here. Enjoy, -Kev ...

A user on StackOverflow had populated a custom schema with a bunch of tables, and needed to replace them with a new set of tables due to various changes. But he couldn't just drop them all in any arbitrary order, because there were foreign keys in place. His workaround was to just run a ''drop all tables'' script multiple times until there were no ...

E.T.L. That's Extract - Transform - Load. That doesn't sound like a lot of work when all you need to get loaded is a simple Access database or an Excel spreadsheet. In a situation like that, the process is so simple, all you really need to focus on is the L in ETL. There's not a whole lot of E.T. to process, despite how wonderful that movie ...