The blog of Andy M. Mallon
Notes from the work, the community, and everything in between.
Yesterday was SQL Saturday #437 or as we call it, SQL Saturday Boston BI Edition. It was my first time helping to organize a SQL Saturday (or any event like this). It was an honor to be asked to join the organizing team, knowing that they already put on some …
Continue readingThis blog post takes a tangent from my usual technology-specific ramblings, but I’ll make the connection eventually. Just bear with me. Dumplings Dan dan mien, mango bubble tea, and petite chicken dumplings in Sichuan sauce Today, I was craving some mapo tofu, …
Continue readingWARNING: Silent truncation ahead Have you ever tried to enter a really long description on a SQL Agent job? Maybe you were trying to put some sort of warning to people who might be trying to edit the job, or triage info for when the job fails. (Ok, so this …
Continue readingWho ya gonna call? If there's somethin' strange in your neighborhood Who ya gonna call? If it's something weird and it won't look good Who ya gonna call? This summer, they've been taping the new Ghostbusters movie in Boston. It's pretty cool to see the …
Continue readingThis series of short posts will demonstrate some lesser-known features, keyboard shortcuts, and other tips that make my day as a DBA more productive. None of these are groundbreaking super-secret features--they are the little things that I do as part of my …
Continue readingThis evening, I did my first presentation at a user group at my local user group. Sure, it was just a lightning talk, but the New England SQL Server user group is a tough crowd. People ask tough questions. Nobody is timid about interrupting you to ask their …
Continue readingShortcuts & tips from an Impatient DBA #9 This series of short posts will demonstrate some lesser-known features, keyboard shortcuts, and other tips that make my day as a DBA more productive. None of these are groundbreaking super-secret features–they are the …
Continue readingNo, I’m not discouraging anyone from being a DBA. I’m just discouraging DBAs from being A-holes. DBAs (and IT folk in general) have a terrible reputation for being curmudgeons, jerks, and a-holes. These guys exist, and working with them is a miserable …
Continue readingAvailability Groups (AGs) are all the rage these days. Every SQL Saturday, every local Users Group, bloggers and DBAs everywhere are all talking about how cool they are. There's a lot of talk about how AGs provide a compelling alternative to Failover Cluster …
Continue readingWhat is the service account running your instance of SQL Server? A lot of DBAs probably know right off the top of their head–maybe because they’re using the same account for every instance. Have you ever had to audit every service account on every instance? If …
Continue readingShortcuts & tips from an Impatient DBA #8 This series of short posts will demonstrate some lesser-known features, keyboard shortcuts, and other tips that make my day as a DBA more productive. None of these are groundbreaking super-secret features–they are the …
Continue readingShortcuts & tips from an Impatient DBA #7 This series of short posts will demonstrate some lesser-known features, keyboard shortcuts, and other tips that make my day as a DBA more productive. None of these are groundbreaking super-secret features–they are the …
Continue readingShortcuts & tips from an Impatient DBA #6 This series of short posts will demonstrate some lesser-known features, keyboard shortcuts, and other tips that make my day as a DBA more productive. None of these are groundbreaking super-secret features–they are the …
Continue readingShortcuts & tips from an Impatient DBA #5 This series of short posts will demonstrate some lesser-known features, keyboard shortcuts, and other tips that make my day as a DBA more productive. None of these are groundbreaking super-secret features–they are the …
Continue readingShortcuts & tips from an Impatient DBA #4 This series of short posts will demonstrate some lesser-known features, keyboard shortcuts, and other tips that make my day as a DBA more productive. None of these are groundbreaking super-secret features–they are the …
Continue readingShortcuts & tips from an Impatient DBA #3 This series of short posts will demonstrate some lesser-known features, keyboard shortcuts, and other tips that make my day as a DBA more productive. None of these are groundbreaking super-secret features–they are the …
Continue readingShortcuts & tips from an Impatient DBA #2 This series of short posts will demonstrate some lesser-known features, keyboard shortcuts, and other tips that make my day as a DBA more productive. None of these are groundbreaking super-secret features–they are the …
Continue readingShortcuts & tips from an Impatient DBA This series of short posts will demonstrate some lesser-known features, keyboard shortcuts, and other tips that make my day as a DBA more productive. None of these are groundbreaking super-secret features–they are the …
Continue readingAaron Bertrand (twitter|blog) recently blogged asking for help to fix a big security loophole. I read the post then, but it was only this morning that I finally got around to REALLY looking at it, thinking about it, and testing it out for myself. Aaron can do …
Continue readingThis is a pretty common problem. I think it’s a question every developer has asked at one time or another: “I want to pass in a comma-separated list of values, then convert it into a table." Every company I’ve ever worked for has had a function that does this. …
Continue readingOne of my coworkers asked me about output parameters from dynamic SQL today. I pointed him at sp_executesql, which allows for passing parameters into or out of dynamic SQL. The syntax can be confusing at first blush (especially for a new DBA or developer), but …
Continue readingWhen I am writing monitoring/alerting stored procedures for my SQL Servers, its important to have those alerts be well-formatted. I like to minimize the amount of time I spend sorting through emails & alerts, and part of that is making sure that I can …
Continue readingAt this job, we used transactional replication extensively with dozens of publications pointing at multiple subscribers. We wanted to migrate the publisher without having to re-snapshot all of the publications. This is how we did it.
Continue readingAt work, we make extensive use of views & synonyms. The reasons are complex (and fodder for another post), but here’s a simplified example: Pricing data is updated multiple times per day, and we want to keep multiple generations of the pricing table online. By …
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