The Bit Bucket

Iron DBA - New Zealand - 2008

Mai and I got back from New Zealand last night after attending the PASS Community Connection event in Porirua (near Wellington) in New Zealand.

It was a fun weekend as always and congratulations need to go to Nathan Pitcher (PASS Chapter leader from Dunedin) for organising it in conjunction with Adrian, Dave, Amanda, Sue and all the gang from the other local chapters as well as the staff of the local polytechnic where the event was held.

2008-12-08

Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server 2008

I’ve been really busy lately. A big component of that time has been my involvement with the new Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server 2008 program. I was privileged to be chosen to teach six days of the fifteen day program in the recent alpha rotation. In addition, I decided to attend (and pay !) to attend the rotation, do the exams and qualifying lab.

Well it was quite an experience!

2008-11-28

SQL Server 2008 Systems Views Poster

Another project that Ron Talmage and several other of my colleagues have been working on is a new system views poster for SQL Server 2008. I’m told that it’s going to go out with the December issue of SQL Server Magazine.

I got a copy of this at the PASS summit and it’s excellent. In fact, stocks ran out before the conference even really got started.

Congratulations to all involved.

2008-11-28

SQL Server 2008 Upgrade Technical Reference

I’ve been working on the SQL Server 2008 Upgrade Technical Reference with a number of my colleagues (Ron Talmage, Aaron Johal, Steven Abraham, Allan Hirt, Herbert Albert, Antonio Soto, Joe Webb, Craig Utley, Dejan Sarka, Larry Barnes, Pablo Ahumada, Kathy Blomstrom) and a bunch of great folk from Microsoft (Arvind Rao, George Huey, Richard Waymire, Siva Harinath, Edward Melomed, Deepika Mistry, Fernando Caro, Goldie Chaudhuri, Max Verun, Vijay Tandra Sistla, Tom Michaels, Justin Erickson, Devendra Tiwari, Jingwei Lu, Fernando Azpeitia Lopez, Ketan Duvedi, Lukasz Pawlowski, David Noor, Matt Masson, Karandeep Anand, Jen Witsoe, Suzanne Bonney, Megan Bradley, Tresy Kilbourne, Bronwyn McNutt).

2008-11-28

Outstanding new book: T-SQL Fundamentals (Itzik Ben-Gan)

I’m so glad to see that my colleague Itzik Ben-Gan has his T-SQL Fundamentals book now available. This book has been needed for some time. It’s been updated for SQL Server 2008 and I’m sure it’ll fast become one of the standard SQL Server 2008 references.

Details are here: http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft%C2%AE-Server%C2%AE-T-SQL-Fundamentals-PRO-Developer/dp/0735626014/ref=sr _1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1225597357&sr=8-1

The companion web site for the book is here: http://www.insidetsql.com/tsqlfund2008/

2008-11-02

PASS Community Connection - New Zealand

I’m really pleased to see that Nathan Pitcher and the gang in New Zealand have organised a PASS Community Connection event. It will run in Porirua (same place as their last SQL Code Camp) on December 6th / 7th. I’ll be there to deliver a few sessions and the keynote along with Adam Cogan. Peter Ward, Chris Auld, Daryl Burling, Dave Dustin, Duncan Murch, Myles Matheson and Bruce Cassidy are also all doing sessions. It should be a great weekend.

2008-10-24