Of course therein also lies the problem because of lot folks are not exactly sure what they want their CV to do for them. This is why you will often see resumes that have every single technology feature a candidate has ever encountered listed, or why the hiring manager is reading a CV that is eight pages long and wondering when the pain of this monstrosity will all be over. The truth of course is the hiring manager never even read it and instead simply moved immediately on to the next resume without giving it a further thought.

Do you want your CV to be one that gets overlooked? Of course not!

I’m going to share with you exactly what you need to do in order to create an interview winning CV for a Database Administrator (DBA), Data Professional or any other darn profession you can think of for that matter! What prompted such an awesome display of generosity you ask? Well there is a story behind it (eluded to here) that you can ask me about next time we meet but for now let’s just pretend it’s because I’m a super nice chap.

Regular readers will know that I’m a big fan of KISS. Not the awesome rock band but rather the principle of Keep It Simple Stupid! So for your reading pleasure I have compressed a wealth of winning resume writing knowledge into 4 simple rules. I know, impressive right.

In order to ensure that your CV gives you the best possible chance of securing your next interview it MUST be:

1. Readable
2. Relevant
3. Accurate
4. Valuable

Let’s take a look at each rule in a little more detail to find out exactly what is required.

1. Readable

Your CV should be a pleasure to read. It should be an effortless experience for the reader, enabling them to immediately zone in on precisely the information they seek. The language you use should be concise and to the point. You’ve got a limited amount of space to use in order to sell yourself and you want to do so within two pages. That’s right, your CV should be two pages maximum. Anything more and you are not being concise or relevant enough.

In summary some of the points you will want to consider are:

• Scannable – Is your resume easy on the eye? Can the reader easily locate information?
• Concise – Stay on point. Be specific and don’t waffle.
• Incorporate bulleted lists – These will improve the structure of your content, making it scannable and easier to consume.
• Consider font choice
• Two page limit

2. Relevant

Include only what is relevant to the “specific” role you are targeting your CV for. It can be tempting to list each and every skill that you may have, you might be putting your resume forward for a number of different opportunities but if the skills are not relevant then they won’t demonstrate value(see 4.Value below) to the reader. The irony of a catch all resume is that it will actually get you nothing. It’s demonstrably lazy. Don’t do it!

In summary some of the points you will want to consider are:

• Be specific – Include ONLY the information pertinent to the role.
• Don’t include references – You’ll be asked for them if and when needed. Use the space for “valuable” content.
• Exclude personal interests – Your personality will come across/be promoted during the interview.

3. Accurate

The invention of the Spellchecker was a wonderful thing folks, so there really is no excuse for spelling mistakes or poor grammar. All good Data Professionals have excellent attention to detail, fail to get this one right and you’re pretty much just demonstrating that you don’t have what it takes.

In summary some of the points you will want to consider are:

• Spelling and Grammar – Check it, double check it, get someone else to proof read.
• Accuracy of facts and information – SQL 2007 anyone?

4. Valuable

Why should I hire you? You know SQL Clustering, so what! Why is that of use to me as a business owner? Demonstrate the business value you have delivered because of what you know or have done. Simply listing technology and skills is boring. Take your CV to the next level by clearly showing the reader how you delivered value using what you know. Be factual in your delivery and mind you don’t take it to the other extreme or you’ll end up coming across as boastful. The emphasis required on demonstrable financial value for a Sales Director is going to be a lot more than is needed for BI Developer. You need to find the right balance for your market.

In summary some of the points you will want to consider are:

• Expertise – Demonstrate your value through the results of your actions that were enabled by your skills.
• Key Achievements – Make a point of highlighting your big wins and achievements. Deployed an entire DR solution protecting assets work £x million? Tell the reader.
• Demonstrable value – Revenue, costs savings, business awareness. What makes you an asset to have on staff?
• Passion – Show your love of technology(or chosen field) and for learning.

Keep It Simple

There you have it, four simple rules you should make sure your CV follows to give you the best possible chance of winning that next interview spot.

What do you think is important to creating an interview winning CV?

Best of luck with your job search!

More Professional Development Posts

• How To Become A SQL Server DBA
• Why Every DBA is a Clown
• The Politics of SQL Server Performance

“I really hope you enjoyed this post. You can make sure to catch all my posts as well as content exclusive only to the blog by subscribing via Email or RSS. Thanks for reading.”

Don’t miss out on your weekly fix of SQL Server Links, community news and technology banter. Subscribe to the Blog Feed now to ensure you catch all posts. You can also receive posts via Email.

Here’s your weekly roundup of SQL Server Blog Posts, News and Techie Stuff. Enjoy!

• Curing the Database-Application mismatch – The debate continues in this philosophical discussion from Phil Factor(Blog|Twitter). Too much for a Friday? Of course not, enjoy!
• How To: Submit An Item To Microsoft Connect – Submitting a Connect item is a sort of right of passage for a DBA. Doing so means you either found a bug, are pushing the limits of the product or doing stuff that you’re not supposed to. For all these cases and more here’s Thomas Larock (Blog|Twitter) with a video on how you can submit an item to Connect.
• SQL Server 2012 Extended Events Update – 2 – The SSMS UI Part 2 – Continuing his post series looking at Extended Events in SQL 2012 it’s Jonathan Kehayias (Blog|Twitter).
• Three Things You Should Never Say in a Technical Interview – “You currently do WHAT to your database?” Kendra Little (Blog|Twitter) with some advice on how not to flunk your next job interview.
• Careful Hashing – A cautionary tale this week from Michael J. Swart (Blog|Twitter).
• Stop Automatically Updating Production Servers – Imploring you this week, to heed his words of wisdom, it’s Allan Hirt (Blog|Twitter).
• Cloud Computing Patterns: Using Data Transaction Commitment Models for Design – With his head now firmly in the Cloud it’s Buck Woody (Blog|Twitter) sharing more design discussions.
• SQL AZURE LOST ITS LEASE! EVERYTHING MUST GO! – Brent Ozar (Blog|Twitter) sharing why SQL Azure just got a little bit more attractive.
• SQL SERVER – Be Different – Be Leader – An Interactive Journey – This post from Pinal Dave (Blog|Twitter) really caught my attention because not only is it a great thought piece but it’s something a little different for the man to share with us.
• An Introduction to SQL Server Clusters – An excellent explanation of this SQL Server technology feature, as well as some pretty pictures for all the slow folks, courtesy of Kendra Little (Blog|Twitter).
• Professionals have standards – Actually some of us have no standards whatsoever, a discussions for another time perhaps, right now it’s Mike Fal (Blog|Twitter) with some very important advice concerning your documentation (or rather that stuff you were planning to get around to writing eventually).

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This post is part three of the series Your Road to Becoming a DBA, where I talk about how you can forge your very own career path toward becoming the DBA you want to be. You can find part 1 here where I talked about the importance of Laying a Strong Foundation and part 2 here, where I talk about why Acquiring Experience is Key.

In this third instalment I’m going to be talking about everything else that I wanted to cover in reply to the readers email, which is kind of ironic really because the first point I want to make next is about being organised.

Get Organised to Get Ahead

As you can see there’s a lot of things to consider when it comes to becoming a DBA and it can be easy to get a little overwhelmed by it all. In order to ensure you stay on the right path you have to have a plan. A plan for not only how you are going to get to your chosen destination but also the individual steps you are going to have to take along the way.

I’m a big advocate of writing out your goals, as well as the steps you need to take in order to achieve them. There are already a lot of excellent resources available out there to help you do this, so I won’t take up any more of your time discussing them here. If you’re not sure where to start, get yourself a copy of the book Eat That Frog or do a Google(insert favourite search engine) search on “Getting Things Done (GTD)”.

If you’re serious about becoming a DBA, you have to get serious about being organised.

Books for the Aspiring DBA

There are a tremendous number of books about SQL Server available for you to learn from but there is only one title that I recommend to all new DBAs. In fact it’s something that I consider essential reading for every Data Professional. It’s called DBA Survivor: Become a Rock Star DBA by Thomas Larock (Blog|Twitter) .

You can find more SQL Server books I have enjoyed reading as well as other Professional Development titles here.

Writing a Winning CV

What’s the point of a CV? What is the bottom line? To get you in front of the company for an interview! This is what you need a CV to deliver for you. So think about how you can write your CV to demonstrate irrefutably the serious amounts of value that you can deliver for the company.

If you are going for your very first DBA position then you need to work extra hard to demonstrate your cross transferable skills. Make it clear why project x you completed (which could be a completely foreign field to the interviewer) demonstrates that you have a talent for problem solving or excellent attention to detail, or are calm in a crisis or shows you have excellent project management skills etc.

I’m going to be controversial here and say that the vast majority of Data Professional CVs I see (and I see an awful lot) are not just bad but really bad! With just a little bit of effort and planning you can easily separate yourself from the pack and put together a winning CV.

My mind is going crazy right now with all the different things you should and should not do when writing a CV targeting a DBA position. I’m going to cut the discussions short here because I think this point needs an entire post on it’s own!

Travel the Path You Build

“If you can’t see the right road to take in front of you, then go ahead and build your own road to where you want to be!”

There is no right or wrong way to become a DBA. Every person I have met in our community has their own story about how they got to where they are today. Sure some may be similar but no two are identical. This means that you have the freedom to make your own way forward.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the sender for their email. You’ve sparked some very interesting discussions. I hope I have been able to provide you with some ideas on how your can move forward and I wish you the best of luck on your journey.

More Professional Development Posts

• The Art of the Outstanding DBA
• Look How Far You Have Come
• Top 10 Junior DBA Interview Tips
• 5 Days to Outstanding DBA Customer Service
• The Best Database Administrators Automate Everything

Don’t miss out on your weekly fix of SQL Server Links, community news and technology banter. Subscribe to the Blog Feed now to ensure you catch all posts. You can also receive posts via Email.

Here’s your weekly roundup of SQL Server Blog Posts, News and Techie Stuff. Enjoy!

SQL Server Links

• Microsoft Model Databases: Some Unconventional Alternatives? – Taking a closer look at some of the playgrounds we all know and love, it’s Michael J. Swart (Blog|Twitter).
• Webcast Recording – DBA Darwin Awards: Index Edition – Brent Ozar (Blog|Twitter)
• The Minimalist Guide To Database Administration – Combining philosophy with being a DBA this week from Thomas Larock (Blog|Twitter).
• Excuse me sir, are you using that partition? – This gentleman has been churning out some excellent content on a regular basis of late. Definitely one to add to your RSS Reader,  it’s Mike Fal (Blog|Twitter).
• Code to list potential cluster key space savings per table – Performance tuning opportunities for your databases, courtesy of Paul Randal (Blog|Twitter).
• How to Test Your Backup Strategy: Five Simple Questions – Kendra Little (Blog|Twitter) helping you to keep your most important assets safe.
• Network Binding Order Warning during SQL Server Failover Cluster Setup – A handy tip prompted from Jonathan Kehayias (Blog|Twitter).
• Building or Buying a Desktop Based Development and Test Database Server – I’m looking into building out a new home lab right now so this excellent post from Glenn Berry (Blog|Twitter) provides timely advice indeed!
• Three Consulting Tools to Make You a Better DBA – Proving that there’s a heck of lot more to being a DBA, this week Kendra Little (Blog|Twitter) encourages you to wear the consultants hat to raise your game.
• Survey: memory configuration – Make sure you get involved in the latest survey from Paul Randal (Blog|Twitter).
• Executing scripts with sp_addscriptexec – I do a lot of Replication administration and so I was shocked that I did not know about this! An excellent tip brought to our attention courtesy of Brandon Williams (Blog|Twitter).
• Analysis Services Thread Pool Changes in SQL Server 2012 – These changes are going to be welcomed with open arms by our SSAS users. Here’s the CSS SQL Server Engineers (Blog) with the details.

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For those new to the event, #mememonday is the community creation of Thomas LaRock (Blog|Twitter), the driving force of which is to encourage the SQL community to put virtual pen to paper. This months theme “Working with deadlines”.

We’ve all been in a horrible situation like this at one time or another. Wondering how we got ourselves into such a mess. The truth is that such inevitable failure was preordained way before any deadlines came into view. Indeed, these panicked pressure scenarios often come about not as the result of any single significant event but instead as the result of a cumulative effect. It’s the repeated and compounded result of neglecting to plan.

What starts out as seemingly quite trivial, can quickly escalate and run away from you. The more items you juggle at any given time, the more susceptible you are to things wandering out from your reach of control.

When you’re a DBA and things get out of hand the consequences can potentially be astronomical. We’re talking business closure, Game Over. This is why a really good Production DBA is quite literally worth their weight in Gold. Almost everything they do on the job has the potential to impact the bottom line of a business in either a positive or negative way. That’s some serious responsibility right there!

As outstanding Data Professionals then it’s clear that we have a responsibility to ensure that we meet our deadlines on time every time. We can only hope to achieve this with robust planning, context awareness, effective communication and a lot of luck

Don’t miss out on your weekly fix of SQL Server Links, community news and technology banter. Subscribe to the Blog Feed now to ensure you catch all posts. You can also receive posts via Email.

Here’s your weekly roundup of SQL Server Blog Posts, News and Techie Stuff. Enjoy!

• Hey App, quit wasting my time sorting your data  – Every once in a while it’s good to have a bit of rant. Sprinkle it with a smidgen of humour, like Rob Sullivan(Blog|Twitter) and your definitely on to a winner. Preach on brother!
• Bad Habits to Kick : Thinking a WHILE loop isn’t a CURSOR – The man just keeps informing us of our wrong doing but for our own good of course. Here’s Aaron Bertrand (Blog|Twitter).
• SQL SERVER TABLE COLUMNS UNDER THE HOOD – I have a confession to make, I missed an awesome post for the roundup from some time ago. I know right! A fascinating look at some database engine internals from Remus Rusanu (Blog|Twitter).
• What IP are you listening on SQL – Sure there are a lot of ways you can do this but how would you get it done across a large number of instances? Using a little PowerShell magic of course. Here with the fairy dust it’s Amit Banerjee (Blog|Twitter).
• A Temporary Configuration – Continuing the crusade for automation and sharing a script for us to play this week it’s Mike Fal (Blog|Twitter).
• Execution Plans, What Do I Look At? – Given the man has written a number of publications on the subject this is information gold. Grant Fritchey (Blog|Twitter) sharing how he gets the job done.
• Removing Duplicate Dimension Rows in SSIS- Wandering into new territory but with confidence and flair, this week
  Michael J. Swart (Blog|Twitter) gives us some SSIS goodness.
• The SQLRAP Wrap Up – Sharing his experiences of using this Premier Support service it’s Mitchell Bottel (Blog|Twitter). I was not even aware that this service existed, interesting stuff!
• If you weren’t a DBA, what would you like to do? – A brilliant question from Brad McGehee (Blog|Twitter). I would naturally have been a worldclass sportsman, maybe darts? What would you like to do?
• Management Studio tricks you may or may not know about – This week I’m loving keyboard shortcuts, and there’s some great ones down in the Misc Technology posts section below. Back to SQL right now though, here’s the CSS SQL Server Engineers (Blog) with some SSMS tricks for you.

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This post is part two of the series Your Road to Becoming a DBA, where I talk about how you can forge your very own career path toward becoming the DBA you want to be. You can find part 1 here where I talked about the importance of Laying a Strong Foundation.

Acquiring Experience is Key

It seems like all the opportunities that are available out there for DBAs require at least a number of years experience. Companies are not hiring folks that have no prior experience and then training them up to where they need to be. The dilemma of already needing a DBA job to gain experience but then experience is needed to gain a DBA job in the first place, is one that I have talked about before on the How To Become a SQL Server DBA area of the blog. You need to have at least the basics mastered in order to get your foot in the door.

So what’s a budding DBA to do in order to gain more experience? You need to learn, grow and build experience from other sources:

• Forums – I cannot begin to say enough good things about how valuable SQL Server Forums are. Each day I will hit the forums to learn something new about SQL Server and you should too. They are an immense source of knowledge. If you know the answer to the posters question great, you can go ahead and share it so that others can benefit from what you know, whilst at the same time reinforce the knowledge in your own mind. When you don’t know the solution you can subscribe to and follow the discussions to ensure you learn it. You can find out my favourites in my Top 5 SQL Server Forums post.

• Start From a Parallel Discipline – Talk to existing Data Professionals in the community about how they got started as a DBA and you will hear a lot of stories about how originally they were hired to work in a similar discipline, such as a System Administrator, Software Developer or maybe even the dreaded SAN Admin. These folks were given the task to look after/troubleshoot SQL Server in addition to their existing responsibilities and things grew from there. With this in mind one strategy for gaining more experience then is to reach out to teams in your existing company that are already working with SQL Server. Another possibility could be to use your existing skills to acquire a position within an organisation that is using SQL Server technology and to ensure your keen interest to make a lateral move is clear from the outset.

• Certifications – There’s a lot of different opinion out there on how valuable these are. Just having a certification is not going to get you a DBA gig but they can get you to the interview and make you stand out from folks that don’t have them. Now I am a firm believer in the “learning” value of certifications but this only applies if you do it right i.e. actually learn the material and practice implementing it.To find out how to get the most from SQL Server certifications and really learn the material take a look at My Guide to Passing Exam 70-432. (Preachy Tangent: I’ve interviewed a lot of Data Professionals that have certifications listed on their CVs and guess what, I ask them questions directly relevant to the material covered and they had better know their stuff! We all know there are brain dumps out there to cheat your way through some of the certs but any half decent DBA with experience will see past such BS immediately. Don’t be that guy. By taking shortcuts you’re only cheating yourself).

• Local Community Opportunities – The talents of a Database Administrator are always in demand. There are some great ways that you can give something back to the local community in your area, whilst at the same time developing your skills and bolstering the experience on your CV. In the UK for example, there are charitable organisations that often seek the support of the technology community such as iT4Communities or GiveCampUK.

• Build Your Own Lab Environment – There are a lot of different features in the product and there are not many companies using them all. A great way to learn about the different features and gain experience is by getting your hands dirty and implementing them. You can even take things further by breaking the environment and then fixing it again, no really. Practice the different ways you can restore a database. What happens if you fail over a Mirrored database that is also a Replication Publication? Experimentation in a safe environment is a great way to learn. Get used to testing things, it’s an essential part of any robust development cycle used in the field.

What are some of your favourite resources and methods for acquiring more experience with SQL Server?

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Last week I received an email from a reader who was looking for some advice on how to start their own journey on the road to becoming a DBA. I found this really quite inspiring and it got me thinking about how to go about forging the path to being the DBA you want to be. It reads:

Hi John,

I follow you on twitter and have recently discovered your website. I personally think it is very motivating and has a great layout. I will tell you a little about myself to start off and also attach my CV.

My name is **** ****. I am 21 and currently work in IT & Telephony support for a travel agent. I have gained a lot of my experience within IT by self-teaching, online tutorials, books and watching people when they work.

I am very eager to fulfil my passion to become a SQL DBA, a few reasons why I am choosing this path to take in life. I think this would be a very challenging and motivating career. One at the end of a project you will feel somewhat great about what you have done. I think it’s a occupation where I would always be learning and a great profession to work up as junior to the top.

I was wondering if you could help me to fulfil my passion to become a SQL DBA, tips, any companies you know off that is willing to take me on as a junior DBA, giving me to time and proper hands on training I need to show them I could become a great asset to their company, Book, Quick course I could be taking.

I appreciate all the help you can give. I would like to thank you for taking the time to read this.

Best regards,

First, congratulations are in order for having chosen to pursue the path of the DBA. You’ve made an excellent decision and one that I have no doubt will be very rewarding should you so wish. You raise some great questions. Questions that I myself have had and I’m sure other readers have had too. I’ll try to answer them as best I can and perhaps other readers would also like to share some of their thoughts.

To avoid bombarding you super busy readers with too much content, I thought it best to break things up into a number of smaller, more consumable posts and so over the next few days I’m going to share with you how to create your very own path to becoming a DBA. We’re going to look at:

• The importance of Laying a Strong Foundation
• Why Gaining Experience is the Key to getting started
• Books for the Aspiring DBA
• Writing a Winning CV
• How to Get Organised to Get Ahead

Here then are some of my own thoughts, that I wanted to share with you all here, on how you can go about building your own path to becoming a DBA.

Laying a Strong Foundation

As with any serious endeavour, you want to get yourself off on the very best possible start in order to ensure things can move forward optimally from thereon in. Becoming a DBA is naturally no different and there are couple of things that I personally consider important to creating a good strong foundation from which a DBA can grow.

• What’s the primary responsibility of a DBA? - I’m glad you asked because it’s from here that all other things DBA should exude from. In other words, what is the point of a DBA and why would a company need one? You can find out exactly what I’m talking about in my post The Database Administrators Primary Responsibility.
• Relational Theory – SQL Server and in fact all other RDMSs (Relational Database Management Systems) are built on the time tested concepts of relational theory. Learning relational theory will give you the fundamental knowledge you need to start to piece together what the majority of database systems are all about. Not to mention what fun can be had with Normalization. Relational Theory is a transferable skill and one that will give you an understanding that can be applied to most things database design you will do initially. In my opinion it is something that all good DBAs should know. You can learn most of this stuff from the Internet but I would suggest going out and finding a copy of a classic text, such as something that would be used for a University course, for example Database Systems by Connolly & Beg et al.
• What’s the current Landscape Like? - To get ahead of the curve, start learning about the more recent developments in this space now rather than later or when you actually need to on the job itself. The professional landscape that we DBAs operate in is changing and at a faster pace than it has done for quite some time. A lot of DBAs already established in the field are resisting change, use this to your advantage and start building the skills that will be required in the future right now. Think cloud technology or NoSQL solutions for example. What are they? How are they different and when might you want to use them?
• It’s Not Just About Databases – Sure being a DBA requires a good technical knowledge but that’s just one part of it. In order to be an Outstanding DBA your going to want to work on and develop a number of other desirable traits. See 10 Character Traits of Outstanding DBAs for more on this.

What do you think about creating a strong foundation as a Database Administrator?

Be sure to keep an eye out for part 2 to find out why I think Acquiring Experience is Key.

“I really hope you enjoyed this post. You can make sure to catch all my posts as well as content exclusive only to the blog by subscribing via Email or RSS. Thanks for reading.”

Don’t miss out on your weekly fix of SQL Server Links, community news and technology banter. Subscribe to the Blog Feed now to ensure you catch all posts. You can also receive posts via Email.

Here’s your weekly roundup of SQL Server Blog Posts, News and Techie Stuff. Enjoy!

• Bad Habits to Kick : Using AS instead of = for column aliases - Are you guilty of this bad habit? Maybe you don’t even consider it to be a bad habit? Here’s Aaron Bertrand (Blog|Twitter) with his thoughts.
• The 5 DBA Interview Questions You Have to Ask - Getting straight down to business, Thomas Larock (Blog|Twitter) tells you what you need to be asking to hire your next DBA.
• Statistics and Recompilations - A really good piece of writing and a not so well known gem of knowledge here from Erin Stellato (Blog|Twitter).
• Monitoring – Where to start? - Taking it to the next level, Service Level that is, it’s Mike Fal (Blog|Twitter) showing how you can lay the ground work for professional quality monitoring for your customers.
• How It Works: sys.dm_tran_session_transactions - DMV internals insight from the CSS SQL Server Engineers (Blog).
• DBAs and the Career-Life Balance - Striking the balance but how, asks Brad McGehee (Blog|Twitter).
• How It Works: sys.dm_io_pending_io_requests - More DMV internals insights from the CSS SQL Server Engineers (Blog)
• Understanding Database Choice - Adorning the consultant hat this week it’s Brent Ozar (Blog|Twitter), explaining why it is so important to consider the bigger picture in order to understand what’s really being asked.
• Rebuild Your Indexes Online (When You Can) - Introduction? None required reader! More high calibre content from Michael J. Swart (Blog|Twitter).
• Ten reasons to attend SQLBits X - That is apart from the opportunity to meet yours truly of course Here’s
  Simon Sabin (Blog|Twitter) with the details.

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Don’t miss out on your weekly fix of SQL Server Links, community news and technology banter. Subscribe to the Blog Feed now to ensure you catch all posts. You can also receive posts via Email.

Several weeks into January already then and it’s great to see that the SQL community is clearly back into the swing of things following the holidays, delivering a large variety of SQL content for your weekend reading pleasure. Forget SOPA, this week we’ve got PASS scandal, High Availability discussions, Lying DBAs, T-SQL Tips, XML Tricks, Query Plan insights and much more….

Here’s your weekly roundup of SQL Server Blog Posts, News and Techie Stuff. Enjoy!

• Is Your DBA Lying To You? – If you’re not sure, then yes. If you’re convinced their not then they clearly are. Thomas Larock (Blog|Twitter) here with the truth of it.
• Availability, Data Locality, and Peer-to-Peer Replication – Architectural discussions from Jeremiah Peschka (Blog|Twitter).
• SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers – Book Review – Here with his review of the latest book offering from Pinal Dave (Blog|Twitter), it’s  Brent Ozar (Blog|Twitter).
• Including Missing Values in Data Ranges Without a Lookup Table – Why use the “stock answer” when there might be a better way. Robert L. Davis(Blog|Twitter) here with a T-SQL/reporting tip.
• Dynamic Seeks and Hidden Implicit Conversions – Query Plan Internals and insights from Paul White (Blog|Twitter).
• Let’s Get Recursive! – An excellent T-SQL walk-through of CTEs, courtesy of Matt Velic (Blog|Twitter).
• Great SQL Server Debates: Buffer Cache Hit Ratio – In this excellent article over on Simple-Talk, Jonathan Kehayias (Blog|Twitter) explains exactly why the Buffer Cache Hit Ratio metric is just not as useful as you think it is.
• Excluding nodes from XML data before returning from SQL Server – A handy coding tip from Adrian Hills (Blog|Twitter).
• Is the problem with PASS, the community? – A fresh perspective on the matter then from Simon Sabin (Blog|Twitter).
• Conor vs. SQL Azure Resource Usage – Learn how you can gain more insight into your SQLAzure solutions resource utilization from Connor Cunningham (Blog).
• Backups and Disk Space – Are you accounting for all the storage that you really need for those database backups? Erin Stellato (Blog|Twitter) with an important reminder.
• Does filing bugs on Microsoft Connect for SQL Server work? – A lot of community folks submit their bugs and feature suggestions for the product via Connect but just how effective is it? Sharing his thoughts, Jonathan Kehayias (Blog|Twitter).

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