Yearly Archive: 2011

Connect Digest : 2011-12-20

Make SSMS start faster A couple of years ago, I blogged about some ways to make Management Studio start faster. With the latest builds of SQL Server 2012, it seems to be slower than...

Connect Digest : 2011-12-01

Where is my graphical ShowPlan? Many of you on SQL Server 2008 R2 are experiencing a major annoyance with SSMS since installing service pack 1 – when clicking a plan from grid results, you...

Determining distribution of NULL values

Today on the twitter hash tag #sqlhelp, @leenux_tux asked: How can I figure out the percentage of fields that don't have data ? After further clarification, it turns out he is after what proportion...

A birthday, of sorts…

A year ago today, I made quite easily the best decision of my career, and joined the folks at SQL Sentry. I explained a lot of this process in a blog post last year,...

SQL Sentry Plan Explorer v1.3

On Friday, we published a new version of our free query plan analysis tool, SQL Sentry Plan Explorer. We've added a couple of important features: SQL Server 2012 support With a whole slew of...

A rose by any other name…

At the PASS Summit, one of the most anticipated announcements was the release date, and marketing label, for SQL Server code-named "Denali" – the release date is "first half of 2012" (which probably means...

Blogging from the PASS Summit Keynote : Day 2

VP Finance, Bill Graziano comes on stage in a great kilt (but white socks!). No Tina Turner this year. 1,000 people from 53 countries watched the keynote yesterday. He recognizes Tim Radney (@tradney) and...

Blogging from the PASS Summit Keynote : Day 1

Before the lights came down, I had already hit what will probably be the highlight of my morning: having a brief conversation with Dr. David DeWitt. Rushabh Mehta, President, PASS Rushabh Mehta comes on...

SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 3 is available!

Today Microsoft released Service Pack 3 for SQL Server 2008. The build number is 10.00.5500. The announcement blog post from SQL Server Release Services team: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlreleaseservices/archive/2011/10/06/sql-server-2008-sp3-is-now-available.aspx List of fixes: KB #2546951 : List of...

Reflections on SQL Bits 9

Last week I went to Liverpool, UK – birthplace of The Beatles – to speak and to represent SQL Sentry at SQL Bits 9. I have to hand it to these guys – James,...

Connect Digest : 2011-09-22

Where is SYSDATE()? I've talked about this one before, but due to a recent conversation about building a datetime value from separate date/time columns or variables, it may be worth bringing up again. When...

Want your bug fixed? File a good bug!

In some circles I'm known as "the Connect guy" because I've filed a heck of a lot of suggestions and bugs that I've envisioned or encountered, and I'm often willing to file an issue...

My Fall Speaking Schedule

SQLSaturday #84 : Kalamazoo, MI : September 17th I will be giving two sessions at SQLSaturday #84 in Kalamazoo, Michigan. One is on "What's New in SQL Server Denali" and the other, "T-SQL :...

T-SQL Tuesday #21 : Crap Code

Yes, Adam is right: we've all written crap code (the topic of this month's T-SQL Tuesday Wednesday. Usually we have an excuse: tight deadline, short shelf life of the code, or didn't know any...

Connect Digest : 2011-08-08

This week I reported a few bugs – one with sp_helptext, one with Activity Monitor in Management Studio, and one in the new sys.dm_server_services DMV. #683234 : sp_helptext treats non-system objects as system objects...