I'd like more questions like this. One of the biggest technical leaps I made as a DBA was reading the "Inside" book series & learning HOW sql server does...

When I first read about the changes my heart sank, really. This is cutting into the best competitive edge MS has (in the eyes of the people who approve...

I did make my move 3 months ago. The funny part was that the company I was leaving had a hard time believing that I wasn't leaving for pay...

Opening up the features has an direct benefit not just to MS, but to the people that recommend SQL Server and build solutions with it everyday.

I've had to say many...

Meals - questionable depending on the dollar value. Wine, tickets = out of the question.

However, a squishy stress ball with the vendor's logo might work. Or a logo...

Lost the point but learned something new.

I knew that union deduped the sets, but I never thought it through to the logical conclusion that it dedups all rows in all...

I had Litespeed at my previous employer. About one a month a dev would either do something dumb to the data or want to know "what did this row...

To throw out an answer to the original question, here's a utility proc I've used for a few years when I need to call other jobs and wait for completion....

I'm in Minneapolis MN. My (former) manager gave me the delightful task of naming my raise, as long as I could justify it within market range.

I keep a good...

Avamar was pitched to us, and after finding out our environment they backed out and told us that it's not a good match - in the environment we have very...

I'm in the same situation, using Litespeed, needing to refresh the dev dbs at corporate from the dbs in the datacenter.

I'm on SQL2005 so to get any compressed backups I...

Doesn't help now, but for general info:

At the Minneapolis PASS group this week, one of the MS guys did a preview of the features coming in Denali. One of...

* Local SQL user group, if you have one - make a point of meeting people, let it be known that you need a job. Don't force the point,...

It happened again yesterday, and now I'm really puzzled.

The job that started at 8:45AM was still running at 5:30AM this morning. It should have hit its final lock/commit cycle...

I'm going for the quick-hit items here. I haven't found the probable smoking gun, but at least the code change gives me the ability to say something was done...