November, 2008

PASS 2008 – Day 1 Recapped

The sessions from the first day of PASS were great.

Read on for info about a couple of the sessions.

PASS Summit 2008 Kick Off tonight

For those of you lucky enough to make it to PASS, I'll be seeing you at the Kick Off party tonight at the Welcome Reception in Room 6ABC at the event. For those who aren't able to make it, I'll do my best to keep...

I’ll be speaking at the Inland Empire .Net User Group (reminder)

The nice folks at the Inland Empire .NET User Group have invited me to come and speak to them.  This is a great speaking opportunity for me as they are about 20 minutes from my house. I won't be speaking there until...

Microsoft has released more SQL Server 2008 Exams

Microsoft has now released the the majority of the upgrade exams from SQL Server 2005 to SQL Server 2008.

Pictures have been taken of planets outside of our little corner of the galaxy

Now, I know that this has absolutely nothing to do with SQL Server, and if you read slashdot this is probably going to be old news for you. But apparently scientists have taken some...

What exactly is MSDTC, any when do I need it?

MSDTC (aka Microsoft Distributed Transaction Control) is a piece of software which a lot of people use, but they don't really know what it does, or how it works. MSDTC is used by SQL Server and other applications when they want to make a distributed transaction between more than one machine.  A...

SQLServerPedia.com/Wiki Launch Party at PASS

All, I have just been informed that there will be a Lanch Party for the SQLServerPedia.com/Wiki website at PASS on Wednesday the 19th.  If you will be attending PASS be sure to swing by Booth 414 (Quest Software's booth) and pick up your party invite. Details for the location are on the...

How to fix when you can’t copy data when RDPed into a server

So you are RDPed into your SQL Server, and you are trying to copy a script from your desktop to the server, or from the server to your desktop.  But you can't for some reason.  All you get is what's in the local buffer. One option is to log out of the machine and log back in.  But this option...

Very useful little query to monitor the health of service broker

While dealing with a SQL Server Service Broker issue I needed a quick easy way to see how backlogged the service broker was.  So I came up with this little query which is surprisingly effective. select far_service