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Tuesday, January 06, 2009

SQL Server News & Information

tsql, performance tuning, industry trends, & bad jokes

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This site is maintained by Jason Massie. He has 10 years experience as a DBA and has specialized in performance tuning for the last five. He was recognized by Microsoft as a SQL Server MVP. Jason has spoken at the Professional Association of SQL Server Conference, the North Texas SQL Server Users Group, SQL Connections and TechED. He has worked at Terremark (formerly Data Return) for nearly a decade.

You can contact him at jason@statisticsio.com or 469.569.5965

Jason has the following certifications:
  • Microsoft Certified IT Professional Database Administrator (early adopter)
  • Microsoft Certified IT Professional Database Developer
  • MCDBA (7.0 and 2000)
  • MCSE
  • MCSD
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Entries for the 'social networking' Category

Best SQL Server Blog Posts of 2008

Posted by Jason Massie Click to IM Jason Massie on Monday, December 29, 2008 at 8:03 AM to SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2005, social networking
232 Views | 2 Comments | Article Rating

I was going to try to go through my google reader shared items from this year and try to come up a list to end all lists. However, who am I to decide? On top of that, narrowing it down to a top 25 favorites was going to be a enormous task given the huge growth in quality SQL bloggers this year.

However, instead of giving you a list, I will give you a tool to find good SQL blog posts based on the collective conscience on the internet. Hopefully, you will see the value and join in making this tool better.

Popular Posts on “SQL Server”(RSS) from RSSMeme.

Behind the scenes in a nut shell

Blog software syndicates via RSS. Readers subscribe in google reader or their favorite reader but only google reader applies here. When a user in google reader finds a post interesting, he\she can share it. All of the shares are indexed by RSSMeme. The idea being is a human actually recommends the post. More shares the better. Sure, there are also sites like Digg and Dotnetkicks but the down sides to those make them less appealing to me.

A side effect

Using this link you can find recently shared items containing “SQL Server”. This can help you find new interesting feeds. You can also use it to find breaking new on SQL Server or whatever tickles your fancy. However, it may not be quite as real time as twitter.

Start sharing

So if you use google reader and don’t use the share functionality, start! And maybe, you too can be part of the Internet SQL Mafia ©. Westside.

Top Sharers

P.S. Congrats to the Detroit Lions for their perfect season.

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My Blogroll is Jacked

Posted by Jason Massie Click to IM Jason Massie on Sunday, December 14, 2008 at 12:41 AM to SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2005, social networking
211 Views | 1 Comments | Article Rating

I tried to create cool web 2.0 blog roll. It worked for a while but it is hosed.. It would take me too much time to recreate it. Not to mention blogs come and go so I am going to do three things.

  • Share from google reader interesting(to me) posts. These will show up in my friendfeed widget on the left. You can also subscribe to my shared items here.
  • Friend me on Facebook because they show up there too.
  • I am going to do a monthly post on new SQL blogs that I have found that are not getting a lot of exposure but have great content.

So post interesting things and you get  a link from me in several place. Woohoo. Yah, big deal, right? If I am missing you, let me know. The amount of good SQL blogs is growing exponentially and it is hard to keep up.

 

NOTE: IF YOU ARE ONLY POSTING AN RSS SUMMARY, I AM PROBABLY NOT READING YOUR BLOG!!!11WON

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A great post on Twitter and the DB Pro

Posted by Jason Massie Click to IM Jason Massie on Friday, December 12, 2008 at 9:24 PM to social networking
307 Views | 0 Comments | Article Rating

 And not just cause my name was dropped. I have said it before and I will say it again... Twitter\Facebook\FriendFeed has made the internet interesting for me again. The flame has been rekindled.

'A New Look at New Technology' Or 'How Brent Ozar Made Me Buy A New Phone'

by Tim Benninghoff

 

 

 

 

 

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Tagged - Career Challenges

Posted by Jason Massie Click to IM Jason Massie on Tuesday, December 09, 2008 at 9:25 PM to Professional Development, social networking
326 Views | 4 Comments | Article Rating

 Got tagged again. Here are the details:

So here are the rules, please answer the question with at least two answers, once you have completed the answer please tag 2 people that you know to answer the questions as well. If you get tagged by this Quiz please let me know I would like to add all the results to the bottom of this blog so all the answers are in one place.

The Questions for this quiz…

What are the largest challenges that you have faced in your career and how did you overcome those?

1. OJT

I did not always used to be an uberguru SQL ninja expert googler. I learned SQL the hard way. I broke production stuff and learned how to it really quick. I didn’t always break but if it was broke, I had to figure out how to fix it fast. It was challenging but a good way to learn. I try to avoid that most of the time now. It is bad for customer satisfaction. :)

2. Evolving beyond an “enterprise manager DBA”

A really smart DBA way back when told me to get out of the GUI and learn how to administer through TSQL. Meh, EM is just generating the TSQL commands, right? It happened slowly over time. I think after I discovered sysprocesses and some of the other system tables, I realized that the GUI wasn’t all that. Picture giving execute permissions to a user on 50 stored procs through the GUI. Yup, I was that guy. Now, I highly recommend doing most everything through TSQL unless it is a couple clicks and even then know what SQL is running.

So who else has responded:

Denis Gobo

Denny Cherry

Brent Ozar

Tim Ford

SQL Batman

Cherie

Who am I tagging?

Well, I’ll tag Kalen Delaney now that I know she reads my blog. :)

Louis Davidson(@drsql) since he squeeked by the first one.

Jeremiah Peschka(@peschkaj) since he was gloating about slipping through the cracks.

K. Brian Kelley (@kbriankelley)Just cause.

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Social Computing for The DBA Slides and Source

Posted by Jason Massie Click to IM Jason Massie on Wednesday, December 03, 2008 at 8:03 PM to PASS, social networking
203 Views | 0 Comments | Article Rating

Here are the slides from my SQL PASS DBA SIG live meeting today. I thought is was a timely topic with the increase of twitter usage in the SQL Server community after the PASS Summit. A lot of people said they could not get in with the passcode. My apologies on that… I am not sure what happened there. Anyway, here are the slides and .sql file. Please feel to hit me up if you have any questions.

Edit: If you missed the audio too, this post is still valid.

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SQL, The Social Network

Posted by Jason Massie Click to IM Jason Massie on Saturday, November 29, 2008 at 4:18 PM to social networking
265 Views | 0 Comments | Article Rating

 Just a quick vacation post for North BFE, Florida. There is a new attempt at a Ning social network for SQL peeps. There have been a few previous attempts that loss steam after a few weeks. Hopefully, this one will be different. That can only happen if you stop by and participate:

http://sqlheroes.ning.com/

Props to Damon Ripper for starting it.

Edit: Since is was hero themed, I signed up as SQLSilentBob since SQLJackBauer was already taken.

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SQL Twitter n00bs #SQLPASS

Posted by Jason Massie Click to IM Jason Massie on Thursday, November 20, 2008 at 8:38 AM to PASS, social networking
438 Views | 2 Comments | Article Rating

PASS has brought a lot of new SQL folks to twitter and people who were causal users previously have really embraced it. I hope they stick around long enough to “get it”. There are few things you have to do to make the experience good. Ok, one more list.

1. You have to follow enough people with similar interests. “Enough” is relative. 200 is a good number. I need 1000+ but I like to drink from the fire hose.

2. A good start is to follow everyone here, here and here.

3. Search for people with similar interests at http://search.twitter.com

4. Get a real client. I like outtwit. Others like digsby, tweekdeck, twhirl, witty.

5. Use it to update your facebook status.

Related posts:

Social Computing for the DBA

This Update Came from SQL Server

A SQLCLR Twitter Client

SQLBlog on twitter(see video)

Cool SQL People that I Follow on Twitter

Twitter 101

 

Not sold yet, see all of the SQL and PASS comments. On top of that, you get to know the smart SQL people much greater detail than you would on the forums or newgroups. I will be presenting on Social computing for the DBA December 3rd. Stop by.

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No PASS for me

Posted by Jason Massie Click to IM Jason Massie on Sunday, November 16, 2008 at 1:43 PM to Professional Development, PASS, social networking
325 Views | 1 Comments | Article Rating

I have been to SQL Connections and TechED this year so earlier this year I pointed out to my director that they could get a really good group and early bird discount if we send five people. I graciously offered to hold down the fort while they were out. Dumb me :) The session list looks awesome! All I am hearing on twitter is PASS this, PASS that. Yall have fun, asshats! All shenanigans need to end up on YouTube.



If you want to live vicariously like me, follow along here on twitter(RSS)



I also believe Brent Ozar(RSS) and Joe Webb(RSS) will be live blogging the keynotes.

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Social Computing for the DBA

Posted by Jason Massie Click to IM Jason Massie on Tuesday, November 04, 2008 at 10:12 AM to social networking
380 Views | 2 Comments | Article Rating

I am presenting the PASS DBA SIG the 3rd of December at NOON eastern.

Social Computing for DBA

This month, we will take on a "Professional Development" topic after all of the hardcore tech goodness of the PASS Summit.

Less face it. DBA's are conservative by nature and this is a good thing. However, this can lead to slow adoption of new services that could help you do your job and interact with other DBA's. In a Web 2.0 world, you have more than NNTP newsgroups, mailing lists and web forums that community is built around.

In this session, we will look at these services as they apply to the DBA so we can see how we can best leverage them on the job and professionally. The brave may even want to tie some of these services into the data tier. We will talk about good and bad of doing that. We will also take a look at some up and coming services that we should keep an eye on.

Meeting Details
Meeting URL: www.livemeeting.com/cc/usergroups
Meeting ID: DBA SIG 20081203
Meeting Key: <not required for attendees>
Audio Conferencing (Toll-free): 1 (866) 231-6479
Participant Code: 304968
Please mute your line once you dial-in to the audio portion of the meeting.

<teaser> This is especially timely when you see my next post.</teaser>

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This Update Came from SQL Server

Posted by Jason Massie Click to IM Jason Massie on Wednesday, October 29, 2008 at 9:38 PM to SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2005, tsql, social networking, security, Humor
469 Views | 2 Comments | Article Rating

Disclaimer:

Just because you can does not mean you should and even if you should, use with care. For example, you will have no friends after a day or so of updating your facebook status every time a tlog backup runs on your farm. There are also many security concerns to consider. That said, I can think of a few uses for SQL Server Web 2.0 mashups and I am not all that creative.

How it works

Sign up at http://ping.fm and then sign up at whatever services you want to update from SQL. Here is a list of what they currently support. From SQL, we could send a message to twitter or even better, yammer via database mail. Here is the obligatory, “Don’t send anything confidential over email”

Ping.fm is a simple service that makes updating your social networks a snap!

Possible Uses

Augmenting your monitoring – The keyword is word is “augmenting” except for the smallest installations. For the crown jewel of the company, you might get a call from the 24/7 staff and an email. Why not a tweet too especially if it can add SMS functionality that you may not currently have?

Turn X into an RSS feed – Where X could be, all job executions, any SEV error messages, any trace event or DDL operations, or [your idea here]. You can funnel the RSS into the intranet, your reader or [insert creative idea here].

An insert trigger on your press release table – Blast it to the world. Some companies are already doing similar things http://dell.com/twitter.

Personal updates from the SQL Editor – I don’t know about you but I have spent weeks on end in tsql. Some deadlines don’t allow for time to come up for air. It would pretty cool in a geeky way to tell the world that I just replaced 500 lines of cursor code with a 10 liner or whatever without leaving SSMS.

 

Example Code:

sp_configure 'show advanced options'<