The SQL Server community is really engaged. They are an active bunch on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, they help each other on forums, they attend conferences. But that isn’t enough interaction – the community started a grass-roots effort to hold local conferences on a Saturday. Free conferences. Odds are there’s one near ...

Last week Microsoft announced several new offerings for “Big Data” - and since I’m a stickler for definitions, I wanted to make sure I understood what that really means. What is “Big Data”? What size hard drive is that? After all, my laptop has 1TB of storage - is my laptop “Big Data”? There are actually a few definitions for this term, most ...

SQL Server as an EAV Database -Good Idea?  It seems like I am getting more and more inquires from potential clients asking for help solving performance related issues with what, after some investigation, is using SQL Server as an EAV database. First, for those unfamiliar with the concept, an Entity-Attribute-Value (EAV) database seems ...

Over the past couple of years, the chorus of voices asking, requesting, even demanding that I present my thoughts in a blog has grown so loud I can no longer ignore. As a long time teacher and trainer, I have great respect for the 'written word' -and even more for personal presentation. I thrive on dialogue, I refine and clarify my thoughts ...