18Jan 2010 by Grant Fritchey 3 Comments

What three events brought you here?

Misc
Another one of the DBA bloggers games of tag is occurring. I've been asked by Tom LaRock to answer Paul Randal's question; What three events brought you here. Well, mom was a cheerleader and dad was a football player, so... Oh, wait. I guess I misunderstood the question. He means what three events lead me to becoming a data geek. Well, that's completely different. Luckily, no (further) cheerleaders will be harmed in making this (part of the) story. Geek When I was 16 years old and Jimmy Carter was President, Radio Shack was still considered to be the place for aspiring geek wannabe's. It just so happened that I hit $500 in my bank account about the same time they started pushing this radical thing called a "personal computer." I…
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18Jan 2010 by Grant Fritchey 6 Comments

Database Design Process

Misc, Tools
Buck Woody recently asked a question; how do you design a database. He outlined the process he followed and asked four questions about how each of us do our work: What process do you follow? How important are the business requirements? What tool do you use to create the design, do you need it to diagram, do you even care about diagrams? What's your biggest pain-point about designing? Funny enough, I haven't done a full on database design in over a year. My company just finished about 6 years of very hard-core engineering work, designing and building or redesigning and building, the majority of our data input and collection systems. Then, I was doing lots of design work. Now, we're either largely in maintenance mode for most of those systems, or the…
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13Jan 2010 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

SQL Server Standard Volume 7 Issue 1

Misc
Kathi Kellenberger's fantastic new article is available in the latest issue of SQL Server Standard. There are a lot more articles in the hopper. Keep an eye out for them. We're providing you with the best writers giving us some of their best stuff. Go and check it out. If you're not a member of SQL PASS, it's free to join, and you'll get access to this article, lots more like it, as well as other stuff.
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11Jan 2010 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Horror… sort of

Misc
You must read this post from Tim Ford to understand why I might do this on my technical blog. But Tim's a friend and the chance to branch out, at least a little, could not be avoided. I hope I don't lose too many of my eight readers from this.... The sign read "Live Nude Cats," so of course, I had to go and take a look. It wasn't the best part of town and I certainly didn't have any reason to be there, but the sign read "Live Nude Cats." How could I resist? How could anyone? I parked and locked the car, scanning the parking lot. Not good. There must be 50 different ways a person could get jumped in here, and did I mention this part of…
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11Jan 2010 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

New England Data Camp v2/SQL Saturdy #34 Update

Misc
The second annual New England Data Camp is shaping up to one excellent event. We've put together a great set of sponsors. Thanks to them we're providing much better food than last year and the chance at a bit of swag, again, better than last year. But, most importantly, we have an excellent selection of speakers. The schedule has been posted so you can go and check it out and start laying out which ones you can hit. Some of the people speaking are known internationally (Adam Machanic, Aaron Bertrand), some are local luminaries, some are up and coming, and several are probably on the fast track to being MVP's. In other words, this is the place to go to learn something about SQL Server in New England. It's not…
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04Jan 2010 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

SQL Server Standard Article Abstracts

Misc
I'd really like to publish your article in SQL Server Standard. All I need from you is an abstract, a description of what the article will be. I've posted this before, but I've never provided examples. So, to get people started, here are a few examples of articles that have been accepted and will be published (shortly I hope). Here's a great example from Andy Leonard. It includes a great amount of detail, more than I need to make my decision, but with this much detail, the decision is much easier because I know exactly what this article is likely to look like:    I'm interested in writing an article on SSIS for SQL Server Standard. I'd like to cover ways packages can exchange information at run-time. There are a couple…
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01Jan 2010 by Grant Fritchey 9 Comments

Plagiarism

Misc
UPDATE: Lulu has removed, not just my stolen material, but all offending material. That means some of the links in this post will no longer work. Back to the post... And really bad plagiarism at that. I received an email from someone suggesting I check out a book on Lulu.com, that it might be a copy of my book. Sure enough, this other guy, William Miller, had posted my book, with the original cover (that had my name on it) and the original description on his own "author" page. He also offered a decent little discount on the price. Nice guy. I tried to get an image of his copy of my book, but I can't find anything on any of the internet archives, which is just as well. His work…
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22Dec 2009 by Grant Fritchey 4 Comments

Apology

Misc
I've been somewhat light in my blogging of late. Unfortunately, I just haven't hit any interesting or difficult problems lately that were worth sharing. I'll try to break one of our production systems in an interesting way very soon so that I've got something to write about, even if it's how to look for a new job.
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15Dec 2009 by Grant Fritchey 17 Comments

What is Your Greatest Weakness

Misc
I was tagged earlier this week by Tim Ford to comment on my biggest weakness. I wish I could say that it's the color yellow (stupidest weakness, ever), or kryptonite. I don't have to wear ruby-quartz glasses everywhere (and good thing too). Certainly getting tied up by a man isn't my weakness (eeewww). And while I do agree that with great power comes great responsibility, I don't feel responsible for everything. I'm not suffering from a terminal heart condition (or shards of metal in my blood stream). So, I've avoided all the obvious (or silly) weaknesses. No, unfortunately, my weaknesses, and they are myriad, varied, and far too numerous, are pretty much of the straight human variety, despite my rather obviously being a mutant. Trying to pick one that stands out,…
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02Dec 2009 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

SQL Standard Update

Misc
Andy Warren in the latest PASS Connector has posted an update on where we're at with the SQL Server Standard. I'm so happy that Andy has been keeping this out in front of people. It provides some impetus to get the work done. Except for the authors thanks (and they're receiving $500, so they should say thank you), there's very little feedback on the Standard to show whether or not people are interested, if the goals and ideas are worthy... In other words, you guys need to let us know what you think about the thing. Two more articles are in the hopper to be published. Another has gone into copy edit. We're technical editing two others. That's five more, so you guys can expect to see another ten weeks…
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