Monthly Archives: January 2011

Fun with Extended Properties in SQL Server 2008

Posted on January 10, 2011 by Glenn Berry

Most technical professionals don’t seem to enjoy writing and maintaining documentation for their databases. I know that documentation falls pretty low on my favorites list. One pretty easy way to include some “built-in” database documentation for your databases (which could … Continue reading →

Posted in SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 R2 | Tagged , | 6 Comments

My First Sandy Bridge Desktop System

Posted on January 9, 2011 by Glenn Berry

I was standing in line at the Denver Micro Center at 11AM this morning (despite the beginnings of a small blizzard), so I could get my hands on a 32nm Intel “Sandy Bridge” Core i7 2600K processor. It is a … Continue reading →

Posted in Computer Hardware | Tagged , , | 11 Comments

Microsoft Certified Master in SQL Server 2008 Knowledge Exam

Posted on January 8, 2011 by Glenn Berry

I woke up bright and early Saturday to take the beta version of the Microsoft Certified Master in SQL Server 2008 Knowledge Exam at a Prometric Testing center in Greenwood Village, CO. Since 1995, I have passed about 25 different … Continue reading →

Posted in Microsoft Training | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Bad DBA or Bad Developer?

Posted on January 7, 2011 by Glenn Berry

I was browsing a public web site from a large company today, when I saw the error page shown below.  It looks like they are using ColdFusion to talk to SQL Server using JDBC, and they are missing a stored … Continue reading →

Posted in SQL Server 2008 R2 | 2 Comments

SQL Server Index Tuning for Mere Mortals

Posted on January 6, 2011 by Glenn Berry

One of the most important things to measure, monitor, and “get right” for good overall SQL Server OLTP performance is the number and composition of your SQL Server relational indexes. It is extremely important to have neither too many or … Continue reading →

Posted in SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 R2 | Tagged , , , | 10 Comments

Microsoft DreamSpark for Students

Posted on January 4, 2011 by Glenn Berry

If you are a college or high school student, you can get a very valuable assortment of free software from the Microsoft DreamSpark program. As Microsoft says on the web site: DreamSpark is simple: It’s about giving students Microsoft professional … Continue reading →

Posted in Microsoft, Teaching | Tagged | Leave a comment

Lots of Intel Sandy Bridge News Today

Posted on January 3, 2011 by Glenn Berry

Intel has lifted the embargo today on 32nm Intel Sandy Bridge benchmarking, so there is a lot of good information out there now. If you are in the market for a new laptop in the near future, I would be … Continue reading →

Posted in Computer Hardware | Tagged | Leave a comment

TPC-E Benchmark Analysis by CPU Type

Posted on January 1, 2011 by Glenn Berry

As an experiment, I decided to import the current official TPC-E results spreadsheet into a SQL Server 2008 R2 database, so I could easily query and do some basic analysis against the results. I did a little data cleansing so … Continue reading →

Posted in Computer Hardware, SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 R2 | Tagged , | 7 Comments