I attended the Web Camp in Redmond last Friday at the Microsoft Conference Center.  It was a really nice setup in the room with rows of tables (plenty of space between them) and long power strips so every attendee could plug-in their laptop.  The week before that, I attended SQLSaturday, also at a Microsoft facility, and it had rows of tables setup and plenty of in-floor outlets.  Maybe this is just to be expected at Microsoft…it makes sense that of the events that will be held at a Microsoft facility, it is likely that a large portion of the attendees...

Have you ever been asked a stupid question during an interview; one that seemed to have no relation to the job responsibilities at all?  Tech people are often caught off-guard by these apparently irrelevant questions, but there is a way you can turn these to your favor.  Here is one idea. While chatting with a couple of folks between sessions at SQLSaturday 43 last weekend, one of them expressed frustration over a seemingly ridiculous and trivial question that she was asked during an interview, and she believes it cost her the job opportunity.  The question, as I remember it...

I attended my first SQLSaturday a couple of days ago, SQLSaturday #43 in Redmond (at Microsoft).  I got there really early, primarily because I forgot how fast I can get there from my home when nobody else is on the road.  On a weekday in rush hour traffic, that would have taken two hours to get there.  I gave myself 90 minutes, and actually got there in about 45.  Crazy! I made the mistake of going to the main Microsoft campus, but that’s not where the event was being held.  Instead it was in a big Microsoft conference center...

I have been doing some testing of using the Microsoft Entity Framework 4 with stored procedures and ran across some really odd results in SQL Server Profiler. The application that is running which uses Entity Framework 4 is a simple Web Application written in C#, and the Entity Data Model is actually contained in a referenced class library of its own.  I’ll write more about my experiences with this later.  For now the question is, why does SQL Profiler think that the stored procedure is running in Master, and not in my application database? While analyzing the effects...

Recently, SQL Sentry told me something about my SQL Server disk configurations that I just didn’t want to believe, but alas, it was true. Several days ago I posted my First Impressions of the SQL Sentry Power Suite.  Today’s post could fall into the category of, “Hey, as long as you have that fancy tool…”  Unfortunately, it also falls into the category of an overloaded worker taking someone else’s word for the truth, not verifying it with independent fact-checking, and then making decisions based on that.  Here’s my story… I’m not exactly an Accidental DBA (or Involuntary DBA...