The first big mistake I made as a DBA was coming to work with my zipper wide open. But I digress.Hear one of my most popular session via streaming media at SQLSentry.TV!Microsoft SQL Server is easier to administrate than any other relational database on the market.  But “easier than everyone else” doesn’t mean it’s easy.  And it doesn’t ...

Me and Aaron Bertrand, SQL Sentry flagbearers.One of the things we've been working on at SQL Sentry is building up institutional knowledge for the SQL Server community. There are three main ways that we're doing that on-line:Hard-core tech articles on SQLPerformance.com, edited by long-time SQL Server MVP Aaron Bertrand ...

 (Originally appearing at http://kevinekline.com/2013/10/09/wait-statistics-in-sql-server/).When it comes to troubleshooting in relational databases, there's no better place to start than wait statistics.  In a nutshell, a wait statistic is an internal counter that tells you how long the database spent waiting for a particular ...

Here's a new post from my website, with many thanks to Microsoft DPE for the Central Region, Keith Mayer (blog | twitter), for these great tips!     Windows 8.1 RTM and Windows Server 2012 R2 RTM bits available on MSDN and TechNet subscription sites. This is the version I'm waiting for since it fully preserves the ...

Hi friends, I know a lot of you regularly read my blog either on my home page at KevinEKline.com, on SQLBlog.com, or one of the locations where it's syndicated. And you may also regularly take in my content on SQLSentry.TV or my monthly column on Database Trends & Applications magazine.   Click the ...

This morning Microsoft released some great updates to Windows Azure.  These new capabilities include:SQL Server AlwaysOn Support: General Availability support with Windows Azure Virtual Machines for High Availability and Disaster RecoveryNotification Hubs: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Notification Hubs (broadcast ...

I've been keen on MySQL ever since I first started using it heavily more than a decade ago.  In fact, I liked it well enough to include it as one of the four main database platforms, over and above the ANSI-ISO SQL standard, in my popular book SQL in a Nutshell. However, with the advent of NoSQL data platforms in the last few years, ...

Ever since returning from the UK for the SQLBits conference, I've been snowed under a mountain of action items.  I've got such a backlog of things to get done, emails to answer, and family to not ignore that I'm starting to feel really guilty.  So with that in mind, I wanted to whip out a quick blog post to let you know I'm ...

The initial release of Database Lifecycle Management is now available on MSDN.The site is something called ''curated content''. This means it's a single consolidated location to look up lots of disparate articles and content, all in one easy to search location. This “curated content view” contains the best content, video, and ...

Every now and then I go off on a tangent away from databases and try to improve some of my other important skills, like maximizing my knowledge of the various Microsoft Office products I use in-and-out everyday.  (Let me tell ya, a good shortcut cheat sheet is worth its weight in gold!  Let me know where I can find some of those for the ...