2013 T-SQL Tuesdays

 

 

T-SQL Tuesday #049 – My Go-To Query For Waiting Tasks

Invitation and roundup from Robert Davis.

T-SQL Tuesday #048 – Cloud Atlas

Invitation and roundup from Jorge Segarra.

Cloud. It’s the juggernaut buzzword in IT for the last couple of years now. By now you’ve surely been exposed to some aspect of it: Azure Virtual Machines, Windows Azure SQL Databases, Amazon EC2, Rackspace, etc. At this point in the game the cloud solutions are fairly mature and constantly evolving to better serve their customer base.

This month’s topic is all about the cloud. What’s your take on it? Have you used it? If so, let’s hear your experiences. Haven’t used it? Let’s hear why or why not? Do you like/dislike recent changes made to cloud services? It’s clear skies for writing! So let’s hear it folks, where do you stand with the cloud?

T-SQL Tuesday #047 – Your Best SQL Saturday SWAG

Invitation from Kendal Van Dyke. No roundup.

 

T-SQL Tuesday #046 – Rube Goldberg Machine

Invitation and wrapup from Rick Krueger.

Building a Better Mouse Trap (Rube Goldberg Machine)

My first exposure to Rube Goldberg Machines was playing the game Mouse Trap as a child. I work almost exclusively on the SQL development side of the house, where we sometimes build crazy creative solutions to solve business problems. We generally know the ‘right’ way to do things, but pesky issue like budgets, personnel, and deadlines get in the way. So, we channel our inner MacGyver, grab a handful paper clips and some duct tape, and then do things with SQL Server that we know shouldn’t be done (in an ideal world). And we hope nobody ever finds out how we bent the rules, because we know they will judge us (as we would judge them) and call our work a <gasp>HACK</gasp>.

So, if you would please, dust off one of those skeletons and tell us how you got really creative with SQL Server, instead of doing it ‘the right way’. In other words, tell us about your ugly SQL baby. If you’re worried about saving face, feel free to describe how you would have implemented the solution if you lived in that ideal world.

T-SQL Tuesday #045 – Follow the Yellow Brick Road

Invitation and summary from Mickey Stuewe.

An audit trail is needed for various reasons. Some companies need it for compliance, others need it to find out who “accidently” did something stupid last week, and some specialized audit trails can tell you how the data has changed over time.

So, it is time to follow Dorothy and Toto down the yellow brick road and to share your experience with auditing data. If you are new to the T-SQL Tuesday blog party and need some ideas, here are a few:

  • How to implement SQL Server Audit which was introduced in SQL 2008.
  • Your favorite audit pattern.
  • Your worst experience with an implementation of a bad auditing pattern.

T-SQL Tuesday #044 – Second Chance

Invitation and roundup from Bradley Balls.

As a DBA or a Presenter/Speaker we have all had at least one moment we would like back.  The demo didn’t work, you were green and got asked a question you now know in your sleep.  You had a presentation in front of a client, and it all went sideways.  Maybe you logged onto the prod server thinking it was dev and dropped something you shouldn’t have.  These moments serve not just as painful reminders, but also as powerful instruments for learning.  Would you like another shot at getting it right?  WELL NOW’S YOUR CHANCE!   Or I guess actually your…. Second…. Chance.  Your missions should you choose to accept it, tell me one of the moments you had, and most importantly what you learned from it!

First and foremost the rules.

Rule 1: Don’t get yourself fired.  If you almost dropped the prod DB last week, truncated an important table, or took down a prod server during critical business hours, and nobody knows it was you & the people you work for read your blog, you should probably avoid writing about it here.  You want to write about events we can look back on and reflect over, not events HR would *love* to know about.

T-SQL Tuesday #043 – Hello, Operator?

Invitation and roundup from Rob Farley.

The topic is Plan Operators. If you ever write T-SQL, you will almost certainly have looked at execution plans (if you haven’t, go look at some now. I mean really – you should be looking at this stuff). As you look at these things, you will almost certainly have had your interest piqued by some, and tried to figure out a bit more about what’s going on.

That’s what I want you to write about! One (or more) plan operators that you looked into. It could be a particular aspect of a plan operator, or you could do a deep dive and tell us everything you know. You could relate a tuning story if you want, or it could be completely academic. Don’t just quote Books Online at me, explain what the operator means to you. You could explore the Compute Scalar operator, or the many-to-many feature of a Merge Join. The Sequence Project, or the Lazy Spool. You’re bound to have researched one of them at some point (if you never have, take the opportunity this week), and have some wisdom to impart. This is a chance to raise the collective understanding about execution plans!

T-SQL Tuesday #042 – The Long and Winding Road

Invitation from Wendy Pastrick. No roundup.

Here’s what I thought it would be fun to share with the community this time around – we all experience change in our work lives. Maybe you have a new job, or a new role at your company. Maybe you’re just getting started and you have a road map to success in mind. Whatever it is, please share it next week, Tuesday May 14th. Make sure you note what technologies you find are key to your interests or successes, and maybe you will inspire someone to look down a road less traveled.

One thing I think would be great to see included in these stories is to hear about how you always thought technology “X” was so awesome, and either it lived up to the hype for you, or maybe it morphed into something else over time. Let’s make these stories about the tech and how that has led you down a certain path.

T-SQL Tuesday #041 – Presenting

Invitation and recap from Bob Pusteri.

This month the prompt is how did you come to love presenting? What was the first time you gave a presentation in front of a group and really enjoyed it? Was it something that was required of you in school? Something you did in the workplace? Were you inspired by other SQL community members and thought “I think I can do that too”? Whatever your story is, I’d love to hear it. Not a presenter? Not a problem! Feel free to chime in with whatever you like that’s related to either presenting or SQL Server in general.