tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-156003582012-01-11T19:37:49.665-06:00Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.comBlogger1271100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-31474806914737855862010-05-27T10:49:00.001-05:002010-05-27T10:49:59.069-05:00

Just double posting for a while till everyone gets the hang of the new location. Don't forget that officially my blog has moved here and I won't be posting very much longer at this location. I know Jen's already blogged on this, but this is my little contribution to the whole, how cool are we, theme. Brad Mcgehee just came to speak at our user group and to my surprise he thought enough of what

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-88938402669218290032010-05-06T10:32:00.000-05:002010-05-06T10:32:29.158-05:00

Hey everybody... after like 5yrs of blogging here, I've made the decision to move this blog over to MidnightDBA.com. Jen and I are consolidating our blogs in the same location so she's moving too. I'm pretty much up and ready to go in the new location so update your RSS feeds to point to the new location because this'll probably be my last post at this address. Maybe I'll double-post for a

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-16183464308329146222010-05-05T12:13:00.000-05:002010-05-05T12:13:14.329-05:00

Hey everybody... it's been a while since I've blogged, but that's what starting a new gig will do to you. I've had so many new things to rant about here and I'm sure I'll be getting to those in the future, but right now I want to share a funny story with you. We had a group of devs who were trying to run a fairly simple insert and it kept filling up the disk. And when I say it was filling up

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-18113199672035224562010-04-02T09:02:00.001-05:002010-04-02T09:02:31.435-05:00

The other day I blogged on a cool way to alter database file properties.  And I promised I would film the solution for you.  Well, I got home that night and started filming but when I pulled up sqlps I was stopped dead in my tracks by something I couldn’t explain.  The methods to get and set were missing.  I checked my other box and they were there, so what happened?  The only difference was that

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-16748764557483651212010-03-31T10:18:00.000-05:002010-03-31T10:18:07.114-05:00

Man, I still just get so jazzed when I work with powershell. Every time I need to do something long and hard(that was for you Buck), I look in powershell and it lets me just lay back and enjoy the long and hard. So this time we've got like 85 DB files for our main DB. I know that's a lot but it's been spread across so many LUNs for so long and it's just grown and grown as it's filled up the

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-35208419172577690832010-03-23T22:23:00.001-05:002010-03-23T22:23:36.611-05:00

I interviewed a couple guys for a DBA position the other day and I asked one of my usual questions which is simply to discuss xp_cmdshell and its implications.  Without hesitation, I got the same answer twice.  Both guys gasped and talked about the evils of xp_cmdshell.  So I let them go on and then presented them with a couple scenarios that we discussed.  And again, all of this just makes me

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-86497904561592315922010-03-10T22:51:00.001-06:002010-03-10T22:51:19.033-06:00

One thing I see from time to time is when someone leaves a gig they’ve been at for a long time, their workmates get upset.  It’s like they’re personally offended that the guy is choosing to work somewhere else.  Look, I know it’s easy to build relationships with people you work with and it’s easy to bond with people you spend so much time with.  Hell, you might even say that you’ve been in battle

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-8576584453575728072010-03-10T11:19:00.000-06:002010-03-10T11:19:27.539-06:00

Today's blog is actually an email chain between me and a user. It's only a single question and reply, but I think it's good info. Q: Hey, would you agree that a monthly load process is better served as an SSIS – even if you have to push/pull from text files for now – than as a series of SPs or DLLs? A: if you're staying on the same box for the load then SPs can be an attractive offer because

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-20537358976593394742010-03-09T23:24:00.001-06:002010-03-09T23:24:54.475-06:00

While talking to a group of devs late last week the topic of deleting prod data came up.  Since I’m the big MVP of the group they wanted to know what the official word from on-high is.  The question is simple, and the answer is even simpler and frankly it’s one of those that was solved so long ago it just doesn’t hold any interest for me anymore.  I’ll hash it out here again though because I know

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-49262145839543554422010-02-10T10:30:00.004-06:002010-02-10T10:59:22.318-06:00

I was asked to write a quick blog on what makes PS so awesome. And while it's a huge topic with many many examples, I'll give you a couple just to get you going on how cool it is.1. It makes it really easy to add things to your process that you never could before. Let's take for example that you want to make a change to your DB but you want to backup the schema for an object or a set of

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-33764370637372270722010-02-09T11:48:00.001-06:002010-02-09T11:48:57.953-06:00

You think I’d learn after all this time in DBs not to take the data for granted.  Here I’ve been troubleshooting a complicated query because I had some anomalous results when it turns out that the data wasn’t categorized correctly and I spent all that time on the query for nothing. I’m telling you this not only to remind you to not take your data for granted, but to show you that no matter who

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-87032864674810272662010-02-03T22:54:00.001-06:002010-02-03T22:54:24.636-06:00

Some of you may remember an obscure little man who used to take a shot at writing now and then.  His name was Ken Henderson.  And he wrote (among others) small series of books called the Guru’s Guide to SQL Server.  He also wrote a little tome on SQL internals.  Now, Ken isn’t with us anymore, but his legacy lives on.  I remember sitting in Ken’s office at MS a few times talking about his vision

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-17661271297187801222010-01-27T17:21:00.001-06:002010-01-27T17:21:55.451-06:00

You know I was thinking just this morning about the last round of interviewing I did to find a new DBA at work.  And that of course got me thinking about some of the interviews I’ve done in the past.  There are a few that really stick out.  The ones that are sticking out right away are the ones who didn’t know anything and claimed that they had so much experience and were so good that they didn’t

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-60077280971702957752010-01-11T16:32:00.002-06:002010-01-11T16:33:25.651-06:00

Here I am on a conf call while shooting bad guys with my baby boy.

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-43462579302227383862010-01-06T13:23:00.003-06:002010-01-06T13:34:53.880-06:00

A friend of mine was in a meeting yesterday and he called me right after because he was upset. Apparently he and someone else had conflicting opinions about how to do something that neither one of them had ever done before... so they were both essentially guessing.He was mostly upset because he said the other guy's opinion was just as valid as his and so far it's brought the group to a

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-80898241203148564802009-12-29T15:52:00.001-06:002009-12-29T15:52:04.844-06:00

I talked to a dev friend of mine recently and he presented me with a very common problem that he ran across at work.  With it being the holidays still, a lot of the members of his team are on vacation.  Well, a problem came up and he was stuck troubleshooting by himself because he couldn’t get anyone on the phone.  And to top it off it’s a very complicated system with no clear troubleshooting

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-51046014898787215042009-12-15T12:17:00.001-06:002009-12-15T12:17:33.487-06:00

Hey everyone, go check-out our new techie gift guide this year… http://infoworld.com/d/applications/last-minute-xmas-wish-list-2009-296   Watch my free SQL Server Tutorials at: http://MidnightDBA.ITBookworm.com Read my book reviews at: www.ITBookworm.com Blog Author of: Database Underground – http://www.infoworld.com/blogs/sean-mccown Follow my Twitter: http://twitter.com/

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-2623180856908066492009-12-15T12:07:00.001-06:002009-12-15T12:07:55.576-06:00

Someone just wrote to tell me that they just had a major outage on their main DW server due to one of the teams upgrading a driver.  There was nothing wrong with what they did, so there’s no reason to believe it would have brought the entire system down. All I can say is that they had the best DR plan in existence and I had to share it with you so you can mimic it in your own shops.  All you

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-19444694598841822752009-12-08T08:49:00.001-06:002009-12-08T08:49:55.799-06:00

We’re holding our first SQL Saturday event in Dallas and I’m in charge of speakers.  So this is an official call for speakers.  If any of you speakers out there are going to be in Dallas (or would like to come) on May 22, then send me an abstract by Feb 15 and we’ll get you going. Send the abstracts directly to me at KO@KenpoSecrets.com OK, that’s all I’ve got for now. Watch my free SQL Server

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-30654228318202577082009-12-03T13:41:00.003-06:002009-12-03T13:47:05.651-06:00

Hey guys... this is my first real video blog... let me know if you hate it too much.

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-79948359302946907392009-12-02T21:23:00.001-06:002009-12-02T21:23:18.834-06:00

I recently had a conversation with Brian Knight and he told me about his new site.  Actually, I was supposed to have posted this mon, but I’m only now getting around to it.  I could sit here and tell you about Brian’s new site, but it may be best to hear it directly from Brian himself: The site is focused only on BI for Microsoft developers. We’re launching with more than 150 blog posts day

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-72781249070793986342009-11-23T15:34:00.003-06:002009-11-23T15:38:17.080-06:00

I find myself multitasking again with my little one.Today I'm testing some HA scenarios with replication while simultaneously being a pirate.Enjoy.Watch my free SQL Server Tutorials at:http://midnightdba.itbookworm.com/Read my book reviews at:http://www.itbookworm.com/Blog Author of:Database Underground – http://www.infoworld.com/blogs/sean-mccownFollow my Twitter:http://twitter.com/MidnightDBA

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-12565927517654411022009-11-20T08:51:00.001-06:002009-11-20T08:51:58.504-06:00

I had a very typical conversation with my 2yr old yesterday.  It went something like this… The Juice Box Benji:  More juice daddy. me:  Ok, go throw the box away and bring me another one. so he goes and throws it away then looks at me. me:  Ok baby, now bring me another box. about a minute later he shows up with a brown box that some books came in. me:  No baby, bring me a juice box.  The

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-21444150400453276292009-11-19T13:31:00.001-06:002009-11-19T13:31:33.181-06:00

Job security is a really big concern for most DBAs because we tend to automate ourselves out of a job.  It doesn’t have to be though. First I’d like to talk about the worst way possible to ensure you keep your job.  I’m talking about those guys who write impossible processes that nobody else can support.  They think that if they’re the only ones who can support it then the company will keep them

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-69388467338373108192009-11-17T22:07:00.001-06:002009-11-17T22:07:57.889-06:00

Have you ever heard something so stupid or been asked such a stupid question that it actually made your brain flatline?  And I mean truly flatline in the way that you actually can’t form a complete thought well enough to respond.  I suppose to a large degree you have to decide whether they’re being serious or not.  One of the things I used to get flatlined on all the time was baselines.  In a

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-3789033564226694682009-11-16T18:36:00.001-06:002009-11-16T18:36:06.418-06:00

The longer I stay in IT, the more I realize I just don’t know what’s common sense and what isn’t.  I used to think all kinds of things were common sense but I’m having to change my opinion on them.  Keeping in mind that common sense changes with each industry, but there are some large overlaps. For instance, I used to think it was common sense to actually test code before you put it into prod. 

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-26599611675941413502009-11-12T20:02:00.001-06:002009-11-12T20:02:03.477-06:00

A couple pieces of code came across my desk yesterday and they’re definitely the kind of thing you read about… if nowhere else, then here for sure.  This was code that a dev sent me that is to be deployed next week. The first one could actually cause a problem so I’ll talk about it first. I’ll write the pseudo-code because I don’t have the actual code in front of me right now.  It goes like

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-62221325426751041842009-11-05T11:46:00.001-06:002009-11-05T11:46:43.247-06:00

I’m just getting sick of dealing with LIteSpeed problems.  My big DW was using a lower version of LS and it was fine for a long time.  Then I upgraded to the new version and my backups went from 30mins to like 10hrs.  So I went back to the previous version.  Then I upgraded my DB from yukon to katmai and i upgraded LS at the same time hoping that the even newer version would work better with

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-81142279847909519772009-11-04T12:05:00.001-06:002009-11-04T12:05:21.039-06:00

So I’m sitting here at the blogger table at the 2nd PASS keynote by Tom Casey and he brings up a good point.  Now this is something I’ve blogged about in the past, but it’s about that guy in your org who goes off and does his own thing and puts a small DB on his desktop and starts doing data loads, and crunching things on his own.  That can be a problem because IT isn’t involved and IT doesn’t

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com90tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-38773764846518981352009-11-03T10:38:00.002-06:002009-11-03T10:41:12.030-06:00

Here’s a picture of a perfmon session with 192 CPUs. This system was running SQL Server 2008 R2 which set a new benchmark. All of those tiny boxes represent separate CPUs and if you look really closely you can see the graph line inside some of them.

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-28975516063031520052009-11-03T10:23:00.001-06:002009-11-03T10:23:40.206-06:00

I’m sitting here at the bloggers’ table here at PASS listening to the announcements.  So far it’s just housecleaning, but Wayne is a good speaker.  There’s been a lot of twitting this year and it really changes the face of the summit because you can find people and events just by pinging the group.  I didn’t think I’d like something like that, but it actually is pretty cool.  I’m horrible at

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-68844412024138845572009-11-01T22:53:00.001-06:002009-11-01T22:53:04.797-06:00

Ok we arrived in Seattle for PASS only I found out tonight that I’m not supposed to call it PASS.  Apparently the PC name for PASS is the PASS Summit.  Oh well… So we started at the Tap House wtih Allen White and his wife and then went to the convention center (I can still call it that, right?) to register.  There we met up with tons of other MVPs and a few people that Jen follows on twitter. 

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-91442256864780669962009-10-28T20:54:00.001-05:002009-10-28T20:54:52.303-05:00

Ok, so the MidnightDBAs are off to PASS next week and we’ll be giving away some of our recently designed swag.  The way this will work is we’ll be twittering our position from time to time and the 1st one to come up and find us will get a shirt, book, or something.  So if you don’t already follow us in twitter, get yourself setup and have them delivered to your phone and just look for us out

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-66247103100529812472009-10-26T18:33:00.001-05:002009-10-26T18:33:38.169-05:00

The DBAs in my area have finally started using their connections through the user group in a way that will actually do them some good.  When they get an offer from a company they put the word out to the user group to get any info on that company that may do them some good in making their decision.  They typically ask what the company’s like to work for, what the bosses are like, what kind of

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-22466207053361633602009-10-21T20:23:00.001-05:002009-10-21T20:23:49.067-05:00

Ok guys, I took a little time off of blogging to catch up on videos and MidnightDBA stuff, but I’m back now and I’ll be blogging more regularly again. So if some of you haven’t heard yet, we’ve now got T-shirts on MidnightDBA and I’m rather proud of some of them.  We’ve got some other stuff too.  The main thing to remember with the shirts is to not take yourself too seriously.  We’re just having

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-60697179308870475822009-09-25T11:21:00.002-05:002009-09-25T11:25:51.873-05:00

You know, sometimes you’ve just gotta do what you’ve just gotta do. And today is another one of those days where I end up multitasking at home because I’m watching my youngest boy (almost 2yrs).So let no one say that you can’t code and play with your kids at the same time.Hence, this is what I look like today.

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-91652851358495984772009-09-01T16:40:00.001-05:002009-09-01T16:40:38.249-05:00

digg_url = "http://dbarant.blogspot.com/2009/09/head-in-clouds.html";digg_title = "Head in the Clouds";digg_bgcolor = "#FFFFFF";digg_skin = "normal";digg_url = undefined;digg_title = undefined;digg_bgcolor = undefined;digg_skin = undefined;OK, so a while back I wrote a post about how Oracle doensn’t build as much of a community as MS.  And not only do I stand by it, but I’ve seen quite a few of

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-62057209499262279602009-08-28T11:42:00.001-05:002009-08-28T11:42:26.659-05:00

digg_url = "http://dbarant.blogspot.com/2009/08/clean-house.html";digg_title = "The Clean House";digg_bgcolor = "#FFFFFF";digg_skin = "normal";digg_url = undefined;digg_title = undefined;digg_bgcolor = undefined;digg_skin = undefined;This post was particularly inspired while cleaning my house today.  It’s easy, if you think you’ve got a clean house then just stand up on a ladder some time and

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-35916483283674736322009-08-19T08:00:00.000-05:002009-08-19T08:00:01.817-05:00

As I promised yesterday I’m gonna talk about process and coding standards today and I want you to really think about what I’m saying here because it’s what separates the men from the boys. This topic won’t ramble on quite as much as the past 2 days have though so don’t worry.  Basically what I want to say is that you should definitely be creating coding standards and following them, but don’t

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-24636162401299552172009-08-18T08:00:00.000-05:002009-08-18T08:00:03.080-05:00

OK, so yesterday I was talking about how servers can take a long time to finally be brought to their knees with poor processes, and that you want to get to the point where your server is on a strict diet and you control every morsel that goes into it. Today I want to talk about how that can play into a real performance strategy because unfortunately you have more to consider than just raw

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-45784856968854841902009-08-17T14:24:00.001-05:002009-08-17T14:24:14.682-05:00

digg_url = "http://dbarant.blogspot.com/2009/08/diabetic-servers.html";digg_title = "Diabetic Servers";digg_bgcolor = "#FFFFFF";digg_skin = "normal";digg_url = undefined;digg_title = undefined;digg_bgcolor = undefined;digg_skin = undefined;One question I get a lot is about performance and how systems can run well for years and then suddenly just stop performing well.  That’s an understandable

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-71260497542942354442009-08-13T14:50:00.001-05:002009-08-13T14:50:19.776-05:00

digg_url = "http://dbarant.blogspot.com/2009/08/silent-dba.html";digg_title = "The Silent DBA";digg_bgcolor = "#FFFFFF";digg_skin = "normal";digg_url = undefined;digg_title = undefined;digg_bgcolor = undefined;digg_skin = undefined;Be careful when you’re complaining about how much advice you get from your DBA because one day he might stop giving it.  And that’s not really a scenario anyone wants

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-39690526452912484102009-08-10T11:11:00.001-05:002009-08-10T11:11:28.498-05:00

digg_url = "http://dbarant.blogspot.com/2009/08/snotting-rights.html";digg_title = "Snotting Rights";digg_bgcolor = "#FFFFFF";digg_skin = "normal";digg_url = undefined;digg_title = undefined;digg_bgcolor = undefined;digg_skin = undefined;I recently ran across a perfectly delicious situation I wanted to share with you.  Someone actually wrote to tell me about this.  He just started a new gig and

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-13917979758500073612009-08-07T13:43:00.001-05:002009-08-07T13:43:36.213-05:00

digg_url = "http://dbarant.blogspot.com/2009/08/powershell-webcast-by-oreilly.html";digg_title = "Powershell Webcast by O’Reilly";digg_bgcolor = "#FFFFFF";digg_skin = "normal";digg_url = undefined;digg_title = undefined;digg_bgcolor = undefined;digg_skin = undefined;Hey guys... I'm starting a webcast series next week on Beginning Powershell for SQL Server DBAs. This is an excellent chance for

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-29960648730386950042009-08-06T09:34:00.001-05:002009-08-06T09:34:43.271-05:00

digg_url = "http://dbarant.blogspot.com/2009/08/get-away-from-gui.html";digg_title = "Get Away from the GUI";digg_bgcolor = "#FFFFFF";digg_skin = "normal";digg_url = undefined;digg_title = undefined;digg_bgcolor = undefined;digg_skin = undefined;I had a comment on one of my last posts that suggested that I talk about a few things and this is the first thing that struck my interest because it’s a

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-68039358903669993402009-08-03T12:58:00.001-05:002009-08-03T12:58:59.209-05:00

We’ve all had companies that didn’t listen to us.  They hire you with the intention of having you make things better and improving their processes.  Then when you come on and start making suggestions, they don’t want to implement any of them.  The reasons can be political, selfish, or just laziness, but the fact remains you’re not doing what you were told you would be.  And the company doesn’t

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-82974014304872220122009-07-31T08:00:00.000-05:002009-07-31T08:00:00.696-05:00

I’ve interviewed many DBAs and one thing holds true more often than not.  Almost everyone has 10+yrs experience, and almost none of them can show the most basic knowledge of SQL.  So I have to ask myself again and again how it is that such experienced people can manage to not have any knowledge about their field.  I think the answer is that these people don’t really have 10yrs of experience. 

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-62573423490271663412009-07-28T15:35:00.001-05:002009-07-28T15:35:29.716-05:00

digg_url = "http://dbarant.blogspot.com/2009/07/landing-that-job.html";digg_title = "Landing that job";digg_bgcolor = "#FFFFFF";digg_skin = "normal";digg_url = undefined;digg_title = undefined;digg_bgcolor = undefined;digg_skin = undefined;You’ve been on a couple interviews and you’re finally getting offers coming in.  But a mistake that gets made quite often is that someone takes the first gig

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-61048423415682762262009-07-23T16:55:00.001-05:002009-07-23T16:55:26.965-05:00

digg_url = "http://dbarant.blogspot.com/2009/07/decimal182.html";digg_title = "Decimal(18,2)?!?";digg_bgcolor = "#FFFFFF";digg_skin = "normal";digg_url = undefined;digg_title = undefined;digg_bgcolor = undefined;digg_skin = undefined;I just reviewed a script that had 3 major problems. 1.  It created a #table and then immediately truncated it. 2.  It passed in a var into the sp and then

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-80770777065258119222009-07-22T23:33:00.001-05:002009-07-22T23:33:46.274-05:00

digg_url = "http://dbarant.blogspot.com/2009/07/murphys-law-of-vacation.html";digg_title = "Murphy’s Law of Vacation";digg_bgcolor = "#FFFFFF";digg_skin = "normal";digg_url = undefined;digg_title = undefined;digg_bgcolor = undefined;digg_skin = undefined;We’ve got this situation at work where we’ve just run across this very well-known law.  The law states that that code you just put into

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-34857384418204612032009-07-20T12:09:00.001-05:002009-07-20T12:10:23.969-05:00

Here’s just a little advice when sending your DBAs a work request.  Keep the request as succinct as possible.  If you can get away without giving tons of extra info in paragraph form it’s easier to get exactly what you want. For instance… if you need a DB restored to a different box the perfect request that will be understood by your DBAs will be this: I’d like you to restore the latest full

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-29536201616637018892009-07-15T08:00:00.000-05:002009-07-15T08:00:02.485-05:00

One of my big peeves is devs writing code to protect themselves against things that never happen. You really see it all the time don’t you?  And it always sounds so reasonable at the time, but it really isn’t if you put any thought into it at all.  Here are a couple examples. We had a dev a while back to introduced a redesign for a job where he put everything pretty much into the same step.  He

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-91868660086269048712009-07-14T08:00:00.000-05:002009-07-14T08:00:08.901-05:00

Ok, not ‘no more’, but you guys should seriously limit your usage of select * for everything.  I realize that it’s easier to support when you change the data requirement, but it pushes a lot more data than you need and that could really impact network and server performance.  Let’s say you’re running a web app and you need 3 cols on your page.  And you pull all 37 because it’s just easier to

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-22258015936873796612009-07-13T13:13:00.001-05:002009-07-13T13:13:25.028-05:00

No you can’t have a generic acct to share with all the devs in your dept so stop asking. And Oprah. Watch my free SQL Server Tutorials at: http://MidnightDBA.ITBookworm.com Read my book reviews at: www.ITBookworm.com Blog Author of: Database Underground – http://www.infoworld.com/blogs/sean-mccown Follow my Twitter: http://twitter.com/MidnightDBA

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-84201944047266282462009-07-09T20:12:00.001-05:002009-07-09T20:12:38.299-05:00

OK, like the rest of the world I have felt pressure to start twittering… so here’s my twitter addr, and feel free to follow me.  It’ll be mostly (if not completely) DB-related stuff so I’ll keep the personal stuff out. http://twitter.com/MidnightDBA   Watch my free SQL Server Tutorials at: http://MidnightDBA.ITBookworm.com Read my book reviews at: www.ITBookworm.com Blog Author of:

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-13904045730592190772009-07-09T17:44:00.001-05:002009-07-09T17:44:12.667-05:00

We’ve all had him… that manager who thinks he’s a wonderful team player but who is more like a Nazi than anything. He thinks it’s teamwork to override everyone’s advice. He thinks it’s teamwork to force people to work the way he wants to work that doesn’t make sense to anyone else. He thinks it’s teamwork to have the minority opinion and force it on the group. And of course he thinks it’s

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-27862476947769244842009-07-02T13:27:00.001-05:002009-07-02T13:27:08.519-05:00

I realize it’s hard to find time to study with work pushing at you all the time and with family pulling on you after that, but you’ve gotta try to find some time or you’ll get left behind. I’m certainly not perfect, but I am pretty good at making time every day to study something.  It’s not that hard really.  Just take 15mins out of your lunch break.  Or take 15mins at the end of the work day

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-43942074553465964192009-07-02T09:26:00.001-05:002009-07-02T09:26:33.123-05:00

I managed to take the 70-450 exam for Katmai a couple weeks ago and I was surprised to find that I got a powershell question. As well, I was looking through some practice questions for the Katmai Dev exam (don’t remember the number)and there were a couple powershell questions on there as well.  So I’ve been saying to people for 2yrs now that they’d better start learning powershell and now it’s

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-5354572964583063212009-06-29T23:48:00.002-05:002009-06-29T23:52:52.466-05:00

I'm on a mini vacation in Santa Monica and of course I took my computer and blackberry because a DBA is never really off-call.I took a couple calls today and answered a couple emails to which my boss replied... maybe I should remind you what vacation means. And it's not that I don't know what vacation means, it's that I really don't mind taking a couple mins here and there to make sure things

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-51259136933630908702009-06-19T10:52:00.001-05:002009-06-19T10:52:29.990-05:00

Is there someone at work you just can’t stand?  That one guy who is a thorn in your side at every turn and not only do you not get along with him, but he’s just as stupid as the day is long… Well I’ve found an excellent way to divert myself from how much I hate that guy.  I write the scripts to remove their access from all the servers and put them in a dir and just wait for the opportunity to

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-90691372981669181192009-05-26T12:57:00.001-05:002009-05-26T12:57:57.807-05:00

What do you do when someone at work is gunning for you? I’ve started up a discussion on the IW forum. I’d like you to take a look at it because this could be a huge topic. http://www.infoworld.com/d/data-management/forums/gunning-you-747   Watch my free SQL Server Tutorials at: http://MidnightDBA.ITBookworm.com Read my book reviews at: www.ITBookworm.com Technorati Tags: Career advice

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-44958833149662198332009-05-19T09:43:00.001-05:002009-05-19T09:43:54.366-05:00

I spent the week at TechED in L.A. and I had the (good?) fortune to sit in on a couple .Net sessions.  The most memorable of course, and the one that attracted me to begin with was on data access tricks.  I didn’t have a session guide with me at the time so I didn’t know it was a .Net session till I got there, but man, once i started listening i was amazed. Ok, so the course was about data

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-73934988896021268782009-04-13T22:22:00.003-05:002009-04-13T22:24:34.842-05:00

Paul Tripp has asked that I urge all of you go on to his site and take his quick survey. It's really quick so it'll only take a minute.And those of you who know Paul's work know he's probably doing it for a reason. http://www.sqlskills.com/BLOGS/PAUL/post/Weekly-survey-does-size-really-matter-or-is-it-what-you-do-with-it.aspx

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-56402967552881115302009-03-20T12:55:00.002-05:002009-03-20T12:57:30.080-05:00

I have a friend whom I don't get too see hardly ever and he wrote me the othe day and said that he really enjoys my rants here... and he says I'm only half full of it most of the time.I like that. I don't think I've ever been described as only half full of it.So thanks man, you know who you are.

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-32978469319624949012009-02-19T09:53:00.002-06:002009-02-19T10:27:38.498-06:00

One of the biggest problems DBAs face when trying to cleanup an environment is fighting the user base. We're quite often forced to limit access they've grown used to and even to institute policies the limit what they can and can't do within their code.Now, here I'm talking about SQL code mainly, but it also stretches to things like deploying new reports and the like. I call this post the speed

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-16212561233193979142009-02-03T11:59:00.002-06:002009-02-03T12:06:16.120-06:00

Sometimes no matter how hard you try things just don't come together.We had firewall issues since we switched subnets so we've been working with the firewall team to work them out.They finally got around to punching a hole for us a couple days ago and I tested it and sent the reply: Just tested the connection and can now connect to the server. Thanks for your patience.I then went on about my

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-23783136093785980712009-01-26T11:17:00.003-06:002009-01-26T12:11:55.996-06:00

I was interviewing a guy the other day for a DBA position I have open and I like to ask questions that help me determine how much someone's actually worked with SQL. And one of the ways I'll do that is to ask them how to perform an impossible task and see how they deal with it. In this case, I asked how he would restore a single table from a backup.He thought about it and went through different

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-64866572977939857602009-01-23T11:51:00.002-06:002009-01-23T11:58:21.470-06:00

We're having a problem with BOE right now and our BOE admin has been on with their support tech for weeks now. The guy keeps insisting that the problem is our DB backups. He says that taking offline backups takes the DB offline so BOE loses connection during that time. The problem is that we don't take offline backups and I don't know anybody in the mssql world who does. That's a fairly

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-39176388212295758932008-09-25T10:36:00.003-05:002008-09-25T10:48:45.258-05:00

Ok, so I don't rant in here nearly as much as I could or probably even should, but here's a good one for you.I got a call from a user who said that he was getting different results when he ran an SP under 2 different user accts. There were no errors, just one was returning results and the other wasn't. So I got on and ran the SP under his acct and the other acct and I couldn't see any

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-17298594724409854642008-08-12T13:34:00.003-05:002008-08-12T14:00:04.960-05:00

I've currently got a SQL programmer who really should be a Linux guy instead. He consistently sends me DB releases with directions like this:1. Open the stored procedure folder and run all the .sql scripts.(Then I go to the folder and there are 3 dozen files in there.)2. Add a CustTypeCd column to the Orders table and use Server2.DW.dbo.Orders as a guide on how to create the column.(Then when

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-29967260343259328862008-05-21T10:16:00.002-05:002008-05-21T10:20:59.420-05:00

OK, I told you guys before that I had my new video tutorial site up and running. Well, it's been just thrown together until now. We finally put some effort behind it and now it's not quite so bad. We've tied it into the main site and it's looking pretty ok... of course, you can expect to see it start turning into a real site here before long, but it's clearly coming along. I've added lots of

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-67344027225878876542008-05-15T09:01:00.002-05:002008-05-15T09:13:36.454-05:00

OK, remember back when I said I was going to be making some vids? Well, I've got them done now. I'm doing more all the time. I average about 3/wk. Sometimes more, sometimes less... that's why it's an average. Anyway, they're posted now so feel free to go take a look at them. My server's slow, and my connection is ok, but it prob won't take much to max it out. But if you keep trying, you'll

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-40362258495057682232008-05-08T11:40:00.002-05:002008-05-08T11:48:22.866-05:00

It happens sometimes when things just don't go as planned. One of the things I always do is to make sure that things I may need in a hurry are ready. Restores are just that kinda thing. I go out of my way to make sure that for any given box, I can access complete restores within just a few secs. I'm using LiteSpeed, so I've written my own code that will create a list of restore statements for

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-30372351720576403502008-05-01T09:57:00.002-05:002008-05-01T10:45:55.471-05:00

OK, this is where the rant portion of this blog comes in. I'm completely at a loss and I just don't know where to go from here.I was approached by a dev/admin the other day with a problem on his SQL box. His job isn't kicking off and there are no errors or anything. It's just not being run by the Agent. And when he runs it by hand, the history isn't logged. OK, so I check the usual suspects

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-16759217887825619902008-04-16T09:07:00.003-05:002008-04-16T09:23:15.885-05:00

I've been on data generators lately so I'm continuing that again. I've actually gotten a hold of a couple more last night so I'll be doing some write-ups on those as well. If you want to catch up, here are the other postings that started all of this.Generating DataGoing RedOK, I was able to get Red-Gate's data generator up and running on my new instance of Yukon last night and I pumped some

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-44089852469830264902008-04-15T12:31:00.003-05:002008-04-15T20:17:28.641-05:00

Like me mentioned in my IW blog last week, I got a hold of Red-Gate’s new data generator and started playing around with it. The first thing I noticed was that it didn’t yet support Katmai. I’m a little confused by that because the libraries should be close enough to be able to make a basic connection so there shouldn’t be anything wrong with it, but alas, it’s unsupported as of yet. I did

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-16931500915664476092008-04-09T11:59:00.003-05:002008-04-09T12:06:18.805-05:00

A good DBA has to be a bit of a therapist at times. We have to take users who are freaking out and get past their anxiety, past their hurt, and a lot of times past their anger, and get down to the real issue. What I find amusing a lot of times is how the most excited users, the ones who are just freaking out, tend to be the ones in the least amount of trouble. Their problems are usually easy

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-60523505702597822602008-04-03T08:31:00.005-05:002008-04-03T08:42:05.824-05:00

I recently installed the latest Katmai CTP on my workstation at home. I installed the entire package. I connected to it just fine and worked with it for several days. I then went to hit it with an external client so I could load some data, but it wouldn't connect. I checked and it was set for remote connections, and it was listening on 1433 so that wasn't the problem. I didn't know if there

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-2972418133410543662008-03-31T14:21:00.002-05:002008-03-31T14:39:54.222-05:00

There are some DBs that just can't be tuned any more than they already are (or aren't). A good example of this is an application that hits a DB and never qualifies any of its queries. They all hit with select * and no where clause. There's really nothing you can do to increase the performance short of just throwing more spindles at it. But that's not really what I'm thinking about right now.

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-14401246712422036982008-03-26T12:43:00.002-05:002008-03-26T12:45:59.864-05:00

I just came across a training site I haven't seen before. They've got a couple free vids, but it's hard to really get a feel for the training from just those. So I'm trying to get a pass to the site so I can review it for you guys and let you know if it's worth it.I'll keep you posted.

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-43518717398465504122008-03-24T11:32:00.002-05:002008-03-24T11:44:21.193-05:00

I've always had a soft spot for celebrities who have their entire lives spilled out in public. It's gotta be tough to not only have everyone see how good or bad you do you in your job, but also in your personal life as well. And I've often thought for everything I'm not (rich, well-known, etc) at least I don't have all my failures made public.At least, that's the way it is until you have a

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-78399921925860236432008-03-21T10:25:00.002-05:002008-03-21T10:28:26.285-05:00

I've started making some SQL Server tutorial videos. I've done like 3 or 4 so far and I'm going to post them soon. I'm starting with a basic topic and building on that. So this time it's backup. I started with the basic backup syntax and am working up to complicated backup procedures. This is meant to be kind of an inclusive tutorial series for someone who doesn't know backups at all to

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-51494935624892385572008-03-20T17:11:00.003-05:002008-03-20T17:32:37.094-05:00

As you know our other DBA just left and he just started his new job. I was IMing him today and asked him how it was going. He said, the last DBA was an idiot. It's funny, cause I can't count the number of times I've said that. I don't thing I've ever started a job where the guy before me knew what he was doing.The question is though, am I really all that good or do I just have an inflated ego?

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-83517194087121333212008-03-19T11:23:00.005-05:002008-03-19T11:59:53.864-05:00

This is the perfect topic to go along with what I wrote on my other blog today in The real difference between SQL Server and Oracle.I just got an email from the producer of the new Kalen Delaney series on SQL Server giving me my press pass into the online content for this series. I've only watched the 1st 9mins so far and already it's exactly what I'm talking about in my other blog. Here's

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-45507734871867075302008-03-11T12:38:00.003-05:002008-03-11T12:40:42.392-05:00

I've had to call a vendor for support and it's already not going well. I'm not going to say which vendor, but I'll tell you that I'm having problems with my SQL backups. Anyway, I went online and filled out the form with all the info... OS, SQL version, etc... then I got the email from the support tech asking me for all this info. I replied by saying I had already filled that stuff out when I

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-2074334134174272052008-03-07T10:20:00.002-06:002008-03-07T10:35:25.888-06:00

Every morning when I leave the house I get in the car and the first thing I do is throw my jellied toast face down in the floor of my car. Why not, that's where it's going to end up anyway when the asshole in front of me slams on his breaks. Now at least it doens't piss me off when it happens. Then when I get to work the first thing I do is run some kind of wild query that fills up all the

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-73878658260786875612008-03-06T09:24:00.002-06:002008-03-06T09:32:22.959-06:00

For those of you who follow my blog, you know that I've used LiteSpeed for many years now. And one of the things that's always bugged me is the lousy way they run their upgrades. To upgrade LS typically consists of having to do some version of manually deleting the current repository tables and then running the install program. And this is after uninstalling your previous version manually as

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-49083135934822522262008-03-05T10:21:00.002-06:002008-03-05T10:46:02.470-06:00

One thing that's as varied as ways to code is how to manage the code itself. Or I guess I should say architect instead of manage, but it all comes down to management.The 2 major ways are to componentize and to not. And by componentize, I mean taking all the individual components and turning them into small independent chunks that can be called from many sources. A good example is taking a date

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-980706800116138952008-03-04T13:48:00.002-06:002008-03-04T14:09:23.081-06:00

This post is dedicated to all those field DBAs who like to call up the prod DBAs and tell them how busy the server is based on the number of spids or short-term blocks returned by sp_who(2).See this is the hidden cost of generic logins that have too many rights. Everyone on the planet can read BOL and try to interpret the results. And whatever they mark in their heads as being the sign of a

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-19484099219136328452008-03-03T09:13:00.002-06:002008-03-03T09:26:07.325-06:00

It's almost never fun to lose a DBA, but it's a fact of life. People leave jobs, and sometimes jobs leave people. This is another reason why it's really important to not tax your DBAs too heavily. If you've got 2 DBAs and they're both working like dogs, what happens when you lose one? I'll tell you what happens... deadlines start to slip, backups start failing and don't get looked into, maint

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-73767385113402399762008-02-29T10:08:00.003-06:002008-02-29T10:31:25.492-06:00

OK, I'm also changing this in the original post, but in case you don't think to go back and check. When I sent my admin password solution to a buddy at MS, he tried it and it didn't work. After a fairly short discovery, I discovered that it worked for me because I had a drive mapped to the admin share on my DC. So PSExec was using that IPC to connect. So unless you're lucky enough to have

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-4924347493074302472008-02-21T19:25:00.027-06:002008-02-29T10:26:41.944-06:00

Last week I somehow forgot the domain admin acct in my lab. I tried for 3 days to remember it and I finally came to the realization that I just wasn't going to. So I started looking around on the web for different things I could do. I wasn't really in a hurry cause my domain was running just fine.I found many methods for changing the local admin acct, but not many for changing the domain admin

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-50917368988221049452008-02-20T09:44:00.000-06:002008-02-20T09:45:03.738-06:00

Wow... I really don't get a chance to write in this blog very often because my company has been blocking the address. For some reason though, they just opened it up so I'll be writing here a lot more. So lookout, I'm back.

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-81296379710134720072007-10-15T20:41:00.000-05:002007-10-15T20:51:34.799-05:00

Man, you ever have one of those customers who gives you Tourette's for like a week? You know the one I mean... he calls you up with something ridiculous he's promised a customer and it falls to you to get it done, only it's a month-long task that he's promised in 12 days. Or the one who keeps getting you out of bed because he won't quit monkeying around in the system and he keeps deleting the

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-10963935366188253082007-08-14T16:06:00.000-05:002007-08-14T16:20:55.370-05:00

I think it should be easier to find the service packs on the SQL site. There used to be a link on the front page, and then it moved to the download page. Now you have to search for it and it does eventually take you to the download page, but it's not easy to find like it used to be.I think I actually found it this time by accident looking at an article for SP hotfixes... and that had a link to

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-72527422357157881052007-08-07T22:06:00.001-05:002007-08-07T22:06:47.406-05:00

I'll tell ya man, every now and then you get one of those users who just tests every part of you.  I've currently got this lady who calls about 3x/wk with one issue or another.  She's a report writer, and not really a very good one, but anyway.  This lady actually never shuts up while we're on the phone.  I took special notice the other day when she called to ask me why her ODBC wasn't working

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-64414707725365667112007-07-31T21:34:00.001-05:002007-07-31T21:34:07.325-05:00

One of the hardest things to manage as a DBA is all the different sources we receive requests through. We get walk-ups, emails, calls, tickets, rumors, pigeons, and sometimes even smoke signals. And while it's easy for the boss to say 'no ticket, no problem', as a DBA in the trenches you can't exactly be a dick to your users. You have to take the request in whatever form it manifests itself.

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-49336117501043483642007-07-05T15:07:00.000-05:002007-07-05T15:09:20.775-05:00

I was watching this guy in the bathroom the other day (no, not like that… be nice!). And something struck me as a bit useless. So what this guy did was he had one of those large PDA phones and he didn’t have any where to put it, so he laid it on top of the urinal while he was doing his business. When he was done, he took it out and went to the sink and washed his hands. Then he took his phone

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-297921909299534522007-06-19T21:29:00.000-05:002007-06-19T21:30:31.066-05:00

OK, I've been promising this for a long time now, but I finally got the RSS ready for IT Bookworm. So you guys go on and subscribe and I'll update it with book and video reviews as well as press releases for new books and videos. I may even put some training discounts up there if they come my way.

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15600358.post-68808845432716402802007-06-18T21:04:00.000-05:002007-06-18T21:10:42.700-05:00

I'm actually double posting this here and at Underground just to help get the word out.OK, from time to time this topic comes up so I thought I'd publish this info in the hopes that someone will find it useful.The problem is with getting non-admins the ability to admin jobs in SQL2K. It's widely known that only SAs can do this, but there's a special DB role in msdb that lets you do this w/o

Sean McCownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02472636630901268842noreply@blogger.com0