The Ashdar Partners Blog

What useful things did I do last week? I listened to a RunAs Radio podcast on "ReverseDSC" with Richard Campbell and Nik Charlebois I listened to a RunAs Radio podcast on "Making Work Visible" with Richard Campbell and Dominica DeGrandis I watched the SQLPASS Summit 2015 talk "Enterprise Auditing with SQL Server Audit" with Colleen Morrow. I caught up with Kalen Delaney's Weekly Webinar , up to and including Episode 11. These cover a variety of technical details on how SQL Server stores data and are probably too gory for newbs. I have been working on these talks for several months, on and off. Much of the material is familiar to me, but it's easy to forget details here and there. I did learn more about the implantation details of row vs. page compression. I watched Advanced PowerShell Module Development with Visual Studio Code with David Wilson, again. I've never gotten P...

I've been a member of PASS for so long that I'm no longer sure when I actually joined. I attended PASS Summit 2004, which was in Orlando, FL. I must have been a member before then. I started with SQL Server in 1998. I feel like someone from the old, long-dead Swynk.com SQL Server email list suggested that I join. (For the uninitiated, membership in PASS is free and you get access to talks from past PASS Summit events. Even though the talks are two or three years old, many subjects are still relevant and many people are still dealing with older versions of SQL Server. In short, you can get good information from some of the best-educated SQL Server experts in the world.) I don't go to as many of the monthly meetings in Malvern, PA as I used to. The main reason for this is that there are many good online venues that provide good talks on SQL Server. My three favorite venues are: PASS YouTube (many PASS 'Virtual Groups' will publish monthly talks here.) SQLBITS...

This is great: SQL Sentrys' Plan Explorer(tm) is now free for all users. I haven't been doing much plan analysis lately, as I have been working with largely legacy SQL Server 2008 R2 (and earlier) code.  I did spend a lot of time with the free version of Plan Explorer about a year and a half ago. I'm unaware of a better tool for it's specific task. While I am on the subject, the other things that round out my SSMS extensions are: Poor Man's T-Sql Formatter . There is a downloadable for SSMS & Visual Studio. Mladen Prajdić 's  SSMS Tools Pack .  I have been surviving on this, mostly, as it's free for legacy use and I've got a lot of legacy... Redgates' SQL Search tool .  It is a little quirky, but I've been using it for years and I'm well used to it. I've been experimenting with the ApexSQL Refactor and Search tools lately, but I haven't committed to them yet. I like the "reformat" that Apex provides. It is ...

Here is a Run As Radio chat with Jeffery Snover . Jeffery Snover is the person most responsible for PowerShell, which revolutionized my approach to database administration. He has a background in scripting going back to VMS (IIRC), which is how he came to create PowerShell. His Twitter bio lists "Microsoft Technical Fellow/ Lead Architect for Enterprise Cloud Group/ Azure Stack Architect/ PowerShell Architect / Science fan". From my point of view, he directs strategy for Windows administration. I listen to him because the things he talks about are likely to influence my work life and they give insight into how the PowerShell team expect people to use their product. The podcast covers a variety of things in a light way. The thing that grabbed my attention the most was that Snover seems to be saying that Windows will be implementing things similar to what linux does with root and sudo. (My linux experience is limited but my two takeaways are: You never log in ...

I spent some time troubleshooting problems in my home office tonight.  Firstly, I managed to realize that the Windows 10 CTP that I've been running on   Brix since the fall was somehow using the  " Performance" power profile. I'm not sure if Windows did that to "help me" or if I did it when I was fiddling with things. Brix is a desktop (sort of -- it actually sits on my sub-woofer), so saving power isn't a big deal but this setting would have led to higher processor operating frequencies, more heat output and a louder fan. I do care about louder fans. One of the reasons that I bought Brix was to get away from my noisy old Core 2 Duo. When I set the power plan to "Balanced", Brix quieted down immediately.  This will probably be more impressive once the temperatures start to climb as we head towards summer. Secondly, I got down to business and finally looked at the time/clock problem I've been seeing around my home office. I had ...

I had someone ask me about DACPACs recently. DACPAC technology had fallen off of my radar after I had seen demos of the feature at a SQL Saturday many years ago. In short, a DACPAC is a file that contains definitions for the objects of a database. This file can be used to create new databases or update old databases to a new version. For the most part, existing data in the updated database should be preserved. DACPAC technology is intended to replace the bundles of .SQL scripts and the giant "Hail, Mary" scripts that are often used to update databases. At the time of that SQL Saturday demo, which was probably in the SQL Server 2008 timeframe, DACPAC technology was new and there were a lot of gotchas. IIRC, it was presented as a way to create databases in SQ:L Azure. A few weeks ago, I noticed that SSDT was creating DACPAC files. I've long been a user of the database comparison tool provided by SSDT and other "Data Dude" descendants, but I didn't giv...

Over the last few years, I've spent more time following business issues in the IT industry than I had when I was younger. Perhaps it's just another mark of getting older. Over the holidays, a news item caught my eye: SugarSync has stopped giving away free storage . It's the hallmark of any new technology or developing area of business: Someone comes up with something new.  Many other players pile into the new space. Some time passes Players that can't make money (or generate the growth numbers they want) leave the new field and the space consolidates. The consolidation can go down to just a few companies. Those companies do not always include the one that created the space. We have seen this with cars (in the first part of the 20th century, there were hundreds of small manufacturers in the US alone. now there are only two behemoths that are headquartered here and a few dozen firms based overseas). Other technologies (radio, television, ISPs, RDBMs, hard d...