There’s been a lot of banter and hype in the SQL Server community this week about the upcoming PASS Summit. Bloggers and Tweeters alike have been sharing their thoughts on which pre-conferences to attend, organising post conference social events and exchanging tips on networking.

Here's your chance for that Golden Ticket?

If you’re not one of the lucky attendees this year then you may be able to get yourself that all important Golden Ticket by entering this competition for the chance to win an all expenses paid trip to the PASS 2009 Summit. Check out Thomas LaRock’s (SQLRockstar) blog for details.

Here are this weeks links…..

SQL Server Links

• More On Elegance in Database Design: Design Decisions – Andy Leonard’s next installment in this series looks at database Design Decisions.
• Granting limited permissions to create views in another schema in SQL Server – Here’s a great tip courtesy of K. Brian Kelley.
• Check SQL Server Agent status on all SQL Servers – Another tip here, courtesy of Colin Stasiuk.
• SQL Server Consilidation – Thomas LaRock (aka SQLRockstar) discusses.
• The Latest Updates for SQL Server 2008 are out – Keep those servers up to date and always remember to test your patching/updates before deploying to a production environment.
• Hole in your backup sequence – Merrill Aldrich shares his experience and solution for this little Gotcha. Be sure you know how not to be caught out.
• Performance impact: Linked server security configuration and how it can hurt you
• Private Clouds and the RDBMS – Jasson Massie shares his thoughts and views on the subject.
• SQL Server Consolidation, Part Deux – Thomas LaRock’s been a busy blogging bee this week. Here’s Part 2 of his SQL Server Consolidation discussions.
• Max Parallelism on Cube Processing – Michelle Ufford (aka SQLFool) has started down the dark and perilous road that leads to Analysis Services. Here’s what she discovered.
• Rant: Overselling your ability on a Job Interview – Excellent post that discusses the concerning trend, of overselling one’s ability in a job interview and provides tips on how to improve your selection process. We all know you like a good old rant Jonathan
• New White Paper on SQL Server 2008 Failover Clustering – These technical papers are being released thick and fast of late. Perfect reading for that daily commute.
• So You Want To Meet People At PASS…But What Do You Say? – Kendal Van Dyke offers up some networking advice.
• Oops, didn’t mean to run the entire script… – A tip on how to avoid a common SQL Gotcha here.
• SQL Server 2008: Script Data as Inserts – a quickie here from Mitch Wheat on an improvement to the scripting feature of SQL Server 2008, permitting table data to be scripted out as INSERT statements.

Misc Techie Stuff

• New vulnerability discovered for Firefox 3.5.1 (Update) – Be sure to get that patch update once available.
• The Latest Greatest Productivity Killer – Jasson Massie here with a Google Reader tip.

My Random Pick of the Week

• 22 Reasons Why People Go Online – Interesting research into why people go online and use the Internet. As if it was not already obvious….

That’s it for this week. If I’ve missed anything that you think is worth mentioning then be sure to let me know. Fire me an email or a tweet on Twitter.

Have a great weekend.