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Predictive Analysis

By Thomas LaRock ⋅ May 5, 2009 ⋅ 8 comments

Quick question: Where would you go to find some basil in your local grocery store? Did you say “by the other herbs?” Or did you say “by the tomatoes?” If you are like me, then you would go looking for basil by the other herbs because, well, that is a natural, logical grouping of products. [...]

There’s a SQL In My Pocket

By Thomas LaRock ⋅ May 5, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

While shuffling some books around at home today I came across the SQL 2008 Administrator’s Pocket Consultant by William Stanek. I cannot imagine the person who has pockets big enough for this book other than the Jolly Green Giant. But since I have never met Mr. Stanek I suppose it is possible he could have [...]

When To Use Auto Shrink

By Thomas LaRock ⋅ March 27, 2009 ⋅ 4 comments

Never, that’s when.
Don’t want to believe me? Well then, who would you believe? How about the SQL Craftsman, a man with more MVP-ness than myself.
What’s that? Not good enough for you? Well, then, let me introduce you to Paul Randal. He had some thoughts on the subject.
http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlserverstorageengine/archive/2007/03/28/turn-auto-shrink-off.aspx
http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/paul/post/Auto-shrink-e28093-turn-it-OFF!.aspx
So why is this still an option? I don’t [...]

PASS Summit Website Is Live!

By Thomas LaRock ⋅ March 24, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

The 2009 PASS Summit website is now live. You can find it at http://summit2009.sqlpass.org/
The new website has all of the details you need for the upcoming Summit. One change you should be aware of are the new dates. We have moved from the traditional Wednesday through Friday format and the conference will now run from Tuesday [...]

PASS Call for Speakers Now Open

By Thomas LaRock ⋅ March 20, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

Did you want to speak at the upcoming PASS 2009 Community Summit? Well, now is your chance! The call for speakers went out today and you can find all of the details at
http://www.sqlpass.org/Community/SpeakerResource.aspx
The deadline for submission of abstracts is April 10th, so do not put this off any longer. Get motivated and submit your ideas as [...]

Something Old, Something New…

By Thomas LaRock ⋅ March 16, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

Something smells rotten in Denmark (it’s probably all that cheese).
This past weekend I started thinking about what it really means to have your databases hosted in the cloud. My first thought was that it struck me as being exactly the same as an Application Service Provider. I mean, MS SQL is an application, right? And you [...]

Implementing SQL 2008 SQL Server Audit

By Thomas LaRock ⋅ March 5, 2009 ⋅ One comment

Last week I attended another Hands-On-Lab at the MTC center in Waltham, MA. One of the new SQL 2008 features I was able to kick around was SQL 2008 SQL Server Audit. Truthfully, I did not even know about this feature until I was handed the lab sheet. Fortunately I was already planning on spending the day [...]

Carbon Footprints

By Thomas LaRock ⋅ February 26, 2009 ⋅ 4 comments

Apparently, someone is concerned with Google searches:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10140142-54.html
Now, why are they focusing on Google? I mean, how many hits a day does Amazon.com get? Why pick on Google? What about MSN.com? (I would ask about Live Search but chances are not enough people bother using that for it to matter as far as power consumption.)
I recall [...]

Find Orphaned AD Logins using sp_validatelogins

By Thomas LaRock ⋅ February 2, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

One of my favorite new features for SQL 2008 is the ability to run commands against all your registered instances immediately. For me that saves time as I have over 150 instances (and growing). The other day I was reading Tim Ford’s blog entry about xp_logininfo which led to an exchange of emails between Tim [...]