The “Great Resignation” is upon us, or so the internet tells us. People want better working conditions, better wages, just… better. Large swaths of people are trying to advance their careers. Here are 6 ways to advance your IT career. Accept that long term loyalty to a small to mid-sized company is likely keeping your … Continue reading 6 Ways to Advance Your IT Career
You’re a data professional and you’re trying to keep up with patching a wide range of SQL Server versions and editions. How do you know what’s in the CU and whether you should apply it or not? My favorite way to read up on CUs is to go to SQLServerUpdates and click around there. … Continue reading Error Messages 8114 or 22122 When Performing Change Tracking Cleanup
Pass Data Community Summit was November 10-12 and was hosted and sponsored by RedGate along with other supporting sponsors like Microsoft and smaller companies like MinionWare. Having been to last year’s virtual Summit, I think this one was done much better. Pre-conference Sessions There were a big collection of pre-conference sessions. I attended “AWS … Continue reading Thoughts On Pass Data Community Summit 2021
As an athlete there is a certain amount of preparation that goes into being selected to be on a team, competing for a starting role and then being competitive with the opponent. For tennis players to be competitive and go to the finals in Wimbledon, it takes hours and hours of training, practice, and … Continue reading 6 Steps to Build a Training Plan
I’ve presented a few times recently and discovered I like doing it. Presenting is a great way to give back to the I.T. community – in this case the SQL Server community. I’ve previously blogged about things I learned from giving my first presentation, and what it was like presenting at New Stars of … Continue reading 6 things to consider when presenting
Back in early July 2021, I presented at the SQL Server Meetup I co-host with Anthony Fortner. We had a speaker no show a couple of months prior and then for the July meeting a speaker had to cancel about a week before the meeting. I couldn’t let another month go by with no … Continue reading What is it like to be a presenter at the News Stars of Data virtual conference
You’ve just been hired into a DBA role at a new company, or you’ve been given the DBA keys at your current company. Maybe you’re a SysAdmin and your boss has informed you that you are now supposed to manage the SQL Servers as well as everything else on your plate. In any of … Continue reading Four Areas to Focus on When You Start A New DBA Role
Everyone wants good performance from their database systems. Some even expect and need a high performing Ferrari all the time. How is this achieved though? What do you need to understand about SQL Server specifically in order to make your company’s applications hum along like a well tuned car? We will look at three keys … Continue reading Three Keys to SQL Server Performance
I recently saw a Tweet from Kendra Little where she asked the simple question, “What got you into databases?” I’m intrigued by people’s stories of how they got into their current careers so I looked through the thread. There were lots of interesting paths shared and even a blog post was shared by someone who … Continue reading How I Became a Database Administrator
SQL Server concatenation methods have been enhanced in modern versions of SQL Server. SQL Server 2012 introduced the CONCAT() function. In SQL Server 2017 we get CONCAT_WS(). A common usage of concatenation, or joining column values together in a string, is combining a FirstName and LastName column into a FullName column. Another common usage might … Continue reading How to Use the SQL Server CONCAT Function