I am honored to be presenting my first SQL Saturday session in Redmond on the 25th of this month. The session will be a PowerShell basics class, emphasis on helping people who might be starting out with PowerShell, or feel intimidated by PowerShell’s syntax or object-orientation. I have demos and material focused on PowerShell syntax in general, ...

This evening I'll be presenting a brand new session on installing and managing SQL Server 2012 with PowerShell. Here's the abstract: Windows Server 2008 introduced Server Core, the operating system without the Graphical User Interface. SQL Server 2012 is the first version of SQL Server to support Server Core. To gain the maximum efficiency from ...

I'll be presenting at the South East Michigan SQL Server User Group (SEMSSUG) tonight. The session will be Gather SQL Server Performance Data with PowerShell. We all know how important it is to keep a baseline of performance metrics that allow us to know when something is wrong and help us to track it down and fix the problem. We don't always ...

When I first learned to program, back in the fall of 1968, the first 'word' the computer I connected to said to me was 'READY'.  That summed it up neatly. The computer was ready to do work, it was just waiting for me to give it instruction. As I progressed through my knowledge of programming and my focus on providing businesses useful ...

After a week of data recovery (see my blog post here) and travel via train with no internet access, I've finally been able to get my presentation materials together from the Training Day and two regular sessions I did at SQL Bits #9 in Liverpool last week.  I've uploaded the materials here for the training day.  If you were in the room ...

Other than changing planes once at Heathrow Airport, I've never been to England, so I'm getting really excited about traveling there next week for SQLBits 9 - Query across the Mersey! My wife and I will be spending a couple of days in London first, and since I'm a descendant of the Howard family from the Tudor period, I'm most interested in ...

As Adam Machanic said, Fall is the busy season for speaking, and it will be for me. Here's a brief list of what's coming up: On Saturday, September 17 I'll be in Kalamazoo, Michigan for SQL Saturday #84, where I'll be presenting my Automate Policy-Based Management using PowerShell. The lineup of presenters for this event is amazing and I'll ...

For the last year and a half or so I've been presenting a session on how to gather perfmon data with PowerShell. Here's a link to my blog after the 2010 Tech Ed conference that has the download scripts. These scripts include the database tables and stored procedures I use to store the data for reporting. Sometimes when I'm at client sites I'm ...

I've written here before about Data Education, the training company I recently launched, building off my previous company Boston SQL Training. Things have moved along quickly, and I and the rest of the Data Education staff are very happy to announce a jam-packed fall and winter course roster. We'll be announcing even more classes later in the ...

Mark Freeman (@m60freeman) posted a question on Twitter using the #sqlhelp hashtag today, asking ''Does anyone have a script to assign db_backupoperator for all databases in an instance to a login?'' I looked and didn't really have anything that fit, but felt it'd be useful to understand the SMO process to create it. Note: one glaring hole I've ...