I posted earlier that we are holding an organizational meeting in a virtual world called ''Second Life''.  Second Life is a Virtual World where you interact with others by voice or typing or gestures.  Here are the details: Where:  Microsoft User Group Island (Classroom 1) - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Microsoft%20Island/190/73/22 ...

Are you interested in SQL Server?  Have you heard about User Group Meetings (perhaps in your area), but it is difficult to get there?  Do you like the idea of webcasts, but get bored due to little interaction?  Come join us in establishing an Official PASS Chapter in the Virtual World of Second Life.  Second Life is a Virtual ...

This is probably not the best time to discuss personnel development, given the current economic conditions, but then again, maybe it is. How much does your company budget for training? I was very fortunate when I was with Advanstar Communications for the last five years because my boss, Rich McCourt, believed strongly in training, both technical ...

My first PASS conference was in 2003 in Seattle, and PASS had as its SIG challenge a project. The people who showed up were divided up into teams, and were given a project that had a Dev, a DBA and a BI component, and had to have the project completed by Friday noon. We weren't allowed access to the project room during conference session times, ...

We are pleased to invite you to the October 9th 2008 meeting of the Ohio North SQL Server Users Group (ONSSUG). The meetings are held on the 2nd Thursday of every month at 5:45 in the Cleveland Microsoft office. The address of the office is below: Microsoft Corporation 6050 Oak Tree Blvd. Suite 300 Cleveland, OH 44131 Agenda: 5:00 - 5:45 ...

For years, I have been keeping an ear open on the local job market for SQL Server Professionals.  I live in the Triad Area of NC (Greensboro/High Point/Winston-Salem).  With many job hunting sites, you can set up alerts to send the various job postings.  I have done this just to try to keep my finger on the pulse of the local ...

Last night at the NYC SQL Server Users Group meeting Linchi Shea presented a session on Data Compression (not Backup Compression) in SQL Server 2008. By understanding how the compression algorithm works, and tuning your clustered indexes based on that understanding, you can achieve some pretty incredible space savings on disk, and performance ...

PASS has launched its new website.  There has been a lot of hard work behind the scenes over the past year to be ready for this.  Nothing ever goes as planned, but I believe that you will agree with me that the improvements made are huge. If you are not a member, membership is now FREE at www.sqlpass.org.  The summit will be held ...

This past Tuesday, I was finally able to attend my local user group meeting.  My travel schedule never seemed to match up with the meeting dates this year.  It was good to see old friends and meet new faces.  John Welch, SQL Server MVP, from Mariner presented on SSRS 2008.  The audience had some good questions which made for a ...

We are pleased to invite you to the September 11th 2008 meeting of the Ohio North SQL Server Users Group (ONSSUG). The meetings are held on the 2nd Thursday of every month at 5:45 in the Cleveland Microsoft office. The address of the office is below: Microsoft Corporation 6050 Oak Tree Blvd. Suite 300 Cleveland, OH 44131 Agenda: 5:00 - ...