Ajarn Mark Caldwell Blog

Bringing Business Sense to the IT World…

PASS Summit 2013 Review

As a long-standing member of PASS who lives in the greater Seattle area and has attended about nine of these Summits, let me start out by saying how GREAT it was to go to Charlotte, North Carolina this year. Read more →

SQL Server Developer Tools – Codename Juneau vs. Red-Gate SQL Source Control

So how do the new SQL Server Developer Tools (previously code-named Juneau) stack up against SQL Source Control? Read on to find out. At the PASS Community Summit a couple of weeks ago, it was announced that the previously code-named Juneau software would be released under the name of SQL Server Developer Tools with the release of SQL Server 2012. Read more →

PASS Summit 2010 Recap

Last week I attended my eighth PASS Summit in nine years, and every year it is a fantastic event! I was fortunate my first year to have a contact (Bill Graziano (blog | Twitter) from SQLTeam) that I was expecting to meet, and who got me started on a good track of making new contacts. Read more →

SQL Saturday 43 in Redmond

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. Read more →

PASS Summit Closing Session

Andy Warren mentions in his Closing Out PASS 2009 post, that he “almost wish[es] for a closing session”. I agree that it would be nice to have some sort of wrap-up session, because it does feel a bit awkward to just fade back to normal life after such a fantastic event. Read more →

PASS 2009 Wednesday

The Summit on Wednesday kicked off with Rushabh Mehta, new PASS President, making some opening remarks and then handing-off to Ted Casey from Microsoft for the keynote. The things that stuck in my mind from Tom’s talk were some whiz-bang demos of PowerPivot with Excel 2010 and SharePoint 2010. Read more →

PASS 2009 Tuesday Breakouts

There are 160 breakout sessions this year at the PASS Community Summit in Seattle, with 14 different sessions going on in any given time slot. This means that there is a really good chance that you will find something of interest to attend during every session time slot. Read more →

PASS Summit 2009 - An Early Start

The Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) is getting a great, early, start on preparations for the 2009 community summit to be held in Seattle November 2nd - 5th. I have worked on the Program Committee for several of the past Summit events (and again this year) and I am impressed and excited by what has been accomplished already. Read more →

PASS 2008: Days 2 & 3

Thursday and Friday of the PASS Community Summit blurred together a bit for me. Not because of the parties Thursday night which apparently left many people bleary-eyed, but the cold medicine I was taking sure didn't help things. Read more →

PASS GO 500

And you thought that you only got $200 for passing GO, didn't you? Well, this isn't Monopoly, my friends, this is SQL Server. And while attending the PASS Community Summit this year, I saw Joe Webb do this trick. Read more →