One of the things that I enjoy about working for Quest Software is that we give back copiously to the community.  From activities and offerings like SQLServerPedia, to our free posters mailed anywhere in North America (and don't forget the free hi-res PDFs for the rest of the world), Don't forget that free DVDs of our virtual conferences ...

Lucy, You Got Some 'Splainin to Do!' Quest Software's latest community initiative, Windows Azure-based Project Lucy, has debuted! Project Lucy is part infrastructure analytics, part social media experiment, and part performance data warehouse. The best things about Project Lucy include: It’s Free - just like our SQLServerPedia ...

Every year at PASS, I do the same thing. I hmm and haw over which sessions I want to go to, and I end up making some tough choices at game time.  This year I believe I'll be pretty busy, so my typical pie-in-the-sky view of how much I'll be able to attend just isn't going to pan out.  Instead, I have selected 5 sessions that I really ...

Join Us for 24 Hours of SQL Server Training (with a special focus on SQL Server 2008 R2)Did I mention that your Cohorts in Crime (that be me and Brent Ozar) are presenting?!? The FREE 24 Hours of PASS event is bringing an exceptional lineup of SQL Server and BI experts to your computer starting at 12:00 GMT (UTC) on May ...

Quest Software Pain of the Week Webcast: The 5-Minute SQL Server Healthcheck Join me and Christian Bolton, UK SQL Server MVP and blogger,as we discuss how to quickly evaluate the basic health of your SQL Server environment. You’ll learn about several quick checks you can perform in minutes to determine if critical thresholds are being met—and ...

I’ve posted a new entry on my SQL Server Magazine blog about two free DMV monitoring tools available on CodePlex.Read the article here:http://www.sqlmag.com/Articles/ArticleID/102837/102837.html?Ad=1Take a look at the two tools and let me know which you like better and why.  Inquiring minds want to know!Cheers,-Kevin Twitter ...

This is a recommendation I believe is worth repeating from time to time: Make sure you match data types when you write TSQL code. Else you in most cases end up with an implicit data type conversion. And in worst case, this conversion is performed at the column side - not the literal side of your query. What does that mean? Consider below: WHERE ...

It seems like questions always come up about how to monitor memory.  But each time the question comes up, it’s slightly different.   Here’s a sort of FAQ for memory questions:   1.  How can I figure out memory and CPU consumption by database? a.  In SQL Server 2005, DMVs are of course the way to go.  Pre-SQL ...

I received a question this morning about whether there are any ways to estimate the memory requirements of executing SSIS packages?  In the case of the question, the emailer wanted to know how to do things like find out the data size at the source and at the destination of a data transformation, or how to reckon the memory consumption of ...

Have you ever looked at the Windows Task Manager for a quick read on SQL Server 2005 memory consumption?   You can get good information from the Windows Task Manager about SQL Server memory, but you have to know what to look for. When running with AWE memory enabled on a 32-bit system, you may see an unusually low amount of ...