A lot has been said and written about the financial struggles facing PASS during the global pandemic.  I would like to address this situation for our local users in the northern Ohio area who are rightfully concerned about the future of their local user group. Before I do, please be aware that this post has not been reviewed by nor approved by any member or leader of the Ohio North SQL Server User Group or PASS.  All opinions are strictly my own. Background Our local user group is the PASS Local Group for Northern Ohio.  PASS, as an organization, is facing financial difficulties due toRead More →

By now it might be apparent to both of my regular readers that I haven’t posted anything new in quite a while. I’m here to say that it’s probably going to be that way for a little while longer. Recently, I was approached about writing content for MSSQLTips.com.  It was a very flattering offer that I gladly accepted.  They have a tremendous library of content to which I’m very proud to be able to add. You can see my author page here.  As of this writing, I already have several live Tips. There just aren’t enough hours in the day to write for both MSSQLTipsRead More →

SQL Server corruption usually happens when a data page is written to disk and the disk subsystem doesn’t write what SQL Server expects.  Or it does write what is expected, but somehow changes it before the next write.  As one can imagine, this should really never happen. But once is a great while it does.  This post will show how page verification can help determine there is corruption before a DBCC CheckDB finds it.  This early warning system can be very effective. What is Page Verification? Page verification is a process in SQL Server where the engine writes extra data to the header of theRead More →

I’m going to start a series of posts regarding corruption detection, prevention, and correction.  In order to detect corruption we must first have a corrupt database.  This post is going to show how to purposely corrupt a database.  I’ll refer back to this post often as it will be the basis of most of the future posts in this series which will pick up where this leaves off. Step 1.  Create a new database.  You didn’t think I was going to ask you to corrupt a real database did you?  We will create one table with some names in it.  The table is abnormally wide onRead More →

It’s been a week since I came back to Ohio after a week at PASS Summit in Seattle.  I’m about 6 days late, but I wanted to take a moment to opine over the things I learned and offer some overdue updates and thanks. I had a fantastic time at the Washington State Conference Center.  They do such a nice job there.  The food is great.  The facilities clean.  I didn’t witness a single issue with A/V.  There were so many volunteers you couldn’t possibly get lost.  Thank you everyone behind the scenes that make this such a great event. I owe a special thanksRead More →

Thank you to everyone that attended my session, I have indexes, but do I have the right indexes? at IT/DevConnections this week in Dallas.  I was truly honored that so many of you chose to attend my session. Please find a zip file containing the slide deck and scripts at this link.Read More →

Thanks to everyone in attendance today at the Ohio North SQL Server User Group.  I was really impressed by the turnout tonight. Below is the blog entry Erin mentioned during the session regarding backup compression and TDE enabled databases.  I confirmed that this absolutely works and will adjust my presentation accordingly. Please find my presentation materials at the link on the top right of this page. TDE and Backup Compression: Together At Last  Read More →

This week started off in Nashville at the in.sight user conference and expo.  My team prepared 6 SQL Server presentations that went off great.  I couldn’t be prouder of my crew.  Back at home the rest of the team did a great job holding down the fort while shorthanded.  2 of my presentations were extremely technical in nature covering minimum maintenance on a SQL Server and index sargability.  Upon returning home the strangest coincidences occurred. On my first day back to work I received a case where a customer had gotten corruption in their database.  By the time the case made its way to meRead More →

I have been selected to present at SQL Saturday #615 in Baltimore!  I’m am honored, excited, and maybe a little scared.  Come see me (and a huge list of all star presenters) on May 6 at Loyola University in Columbia, MD. My session is “Full Text indexing!” or…”What is that service I never turn on?”.  In this session I’ll talk about what Full Text Indexing is, why it is a separate service, how to set it up, and how to use it.Read More →