The Ashdar Partners Blog

This blog post mentions some of the most interesting articles that I have read recently, with a little bit of my commentary on each article.   I read  "Implementing SQL Server solutions using Visual Studio 2010 Database Projects-a compendium of project experiences" . If you are using "Data Dude" in VS, you should read it to. Even if you don't implement all of the suggestions that @jamiet, it will give you a better idea of what is possible. The downside is that you may have to put a fair amount of time into improving things like build output or creating data that can be loaded into a development database that might not match the size of the production database, yet provides enough coverage to provide realistic query plans and durations. PMs are not always sympathetic to spending  time on "features" that users do not see.  Having spent a lot of time with Database Projects myself, you can burn a lot of energy trying to get the tool to do what y...

Every so often, I find that a web site that I've casually used over the years has added features that I never learned about. This seems to happen with more and more frequency. Either I'm involved with too much stuff or I'm just slowing down. Usually, it's  LibraryThing  or  StackExchange . This time, it's  LinkedIn .  I have mixed feelings about LinkedIn. It's fine for what it is, but I find that I am getting more and more email that seems less and less focused on what I am interested in. I only scan the dozen or so LinkedIn emails that I've signed up for, one way or another, looking for contracting positions in the Philadelphia area or perhaps something remote that would let me work out of my home office. Prompted by  this  article, I reviewed my profile a bit, sharpened up some of my wording, added a few keywords to the "Skills" area, created a few saved jobs searches and I'm trying out a service that should update my LinkedIn feed when ...

This blog post mentions some of the most interesting articles that I have read recently, with a little bit of my commentary on each article. This more-or-less monthly posting is a little light on content this month since my spare time has been occupied with SQL 2012, Windows 8 (client and server), openfiler (after an unfortunate experience with FreeNAS), VMWare ESXi, PowerCLI and my new (to me) dual socket, dual core Xeon 5150 workstation. Now, I just need the cost of hard disks to get back to where it was a year ago.   (As an aside, you need to patch ESXi 5 in order to get Windows 8 to install directly as an ESXi guest and boot properly. I would hold this against ESX if Windows 8 would have installed and booted as a VHD on my trusty Windows 7 laptop. That doesn work either. Since I needed to learn how to patch my standalone ESXi host anyway, having to download and install the patch could be seen as a postive thing.)   Generally speaking, I'...