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Implicit Conversions and Avoiding Them With Computed Columns

March 25, 2013 by John Sansom 6 Comments

Production execution plan

I recently encountered an interesting performance issue (due to implicit conversions) that I was able to solve using a lesser known technique and I wanted to share it with you here.

Filed Under: Performance Tuning, SQLServerCentral Syndication, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: Computed Column, Implicit Conversion

How To Be An Expert At What You Do

March 20, 2013 by John Sansom 2 Comments

How To Be An Expert

Experts are always in popular demand and they come in all manner of different flavors.

In this post we look at exactly what it means to be an expert and how you can develop into the expert that you want to be.

Filed Under: Professional Development, SQLServerCentral Syndication, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: Expert

Career Growth and How You Can Achieve Explosive Results

March 5, 2013 by John Sansom 20 Comments

Bench Press

Continued investment in your professional development for career growth is hard. It’s also essential to being a successful Data Professional.

Discover out how to achieve dramatic career growth and results from your professional development efforts.

Filed Under: Professional Development, SQLServerCentral Syndication, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: Career, Career Growth, Career Progression, Featured

Something for the Weekend – SQL Server Links 01/03/13

March 1, 2013 by John Sansom 4 Comments

Battenburg Cake

It’s SFTW Time, I hope you’ve had a great week! Make sure you don’t miss this weekly round-up of SQL Server Links, community news and technology banter by Subscribing to the Blog Feed. You can also Get posts delivered direct to your Inbox free via Email. I don’t typically syndicate (that’s share using RSS technology to you non bloggers) […]

Filed Under: Link Posts, SQLServerCentral Syndication, SQLServerPedia Syndication

Restart the SQL Server Agent Service using PowerShell

February 26, 2013 by John Sansom 3 Comments

Powershell

Just a quick one today chaps, to show how you can restart the SQL Server Agent Service using PowerShell.

Filed Under: Administration, SQLServerCentral Syndication, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: Automation, Powershell, Scripting

Multitasking A Ridiculous Workload – How I Do It

February 19, 2013 by John Sansom 4 Comments

EatThatFrog

There’s no such thing as multitasking. At least, not how most of us think about it. By using the task management system that I share here, you can keep an accurate track of workload, prioritise and ensure that you spend more of your time delivering on what’s really important.

Filed Under: Professional Development, SQLServerCentral Syndication, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: Multitasking, Time Management

Script SQL Server Agent Jobs Using PowerShell

February 12, 2013 by John Sansom 46 Comments

Powershell

Here’s a handy PowerShell script to script-out all SQL Server Agent jobs for a given instance.

Filed Under: Administration, SQLServerCentral Syndication, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: Automation, Powershell, SQL Server Agent

Overconfidence – How it Almost Cost Me and What You Can Do to Avoid It

February 5, 2013 by John Sansom 10 Comments

Overconfidence can have serious consequences for Data Professionals. Guard against overconfidence and avoid complacency by thinking defensively.

Filed Under: Professional Development, SQLServerCentral Syndication, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: Complacency, Overconfidence, Replication, Thinking Defensively

Are You A Technical Expert or Manager?

January 29, 2013 by John Sansom Leave a Comment

The Thinker

Effective leadership is about being mindful of how you engage those around you.

Filed Under: Professional Development, SQLServerCentral Syndication, SQLServerPedia Syndication

How To Win Career Gold

January 22, 2013 by John Sansom 6 Comments

Team GB medal winners

The start of a new working year is often a time for self reflection. This is a great thing, it’s the first step toward you achieving growth, improvement and ultimately better results.

The value of investing in your own professional development is clear. I encourage you to take the time to devise your plan and you will achieve fantastic results.

Filed Under: Professional Development, SQLServerCentral Syndication, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: Career Progression, Community, Goals, Mentoring, Reading, Training

Step Up and Take More Ownership

January 8, 2013 by John Sansom Leave a Comment

TSQL Tuesday Logo

This post is part of the T-SQL Tuesday Meme, this month hosted by Jason Brimhall. His chosen theme, to come up with a story where you “stood firm” and relate it to these words: resolve, resolution, or resolute.  Regular readers will know and tell you that I’m resolute in my philosophy that the Best DBAs Automate Everything. So […]

Filed Under: Professional Development, SQLServerCentral Syndication, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: Leadership, Replication, Responsibility

Your Top 10 Posts of the Year

December 17, 2012 by John Sansom Leave a Comment

Stacked records

Short and sweet today, here’s what you enjoyed reading the most this year on the blog. No accounting for taste then. How To Become a SQL Server DBA My Guide To Passing Exam 70-432 Top 10 Junior DBA Interview Tips The Database Administrators Primary Responsibility Performing Fast SQL Server Delete Operations 10 Character Traits of […]

Filed Under: Blogging, Professional Development, SQLServerCentral Syndication, SQLServerPedia Syndication

The Great DBA Getaway

December 12, 2012 by John Sansom 1 Comment

It’s holiday season which means it’s a time for you all to buy me gifts super busy time for Data Professionals! Bosses are keen to take of advantage of the opportune downtime to get maintenance done and your colleagues are abandoning the office in droves. Leaving their troubles and work behind them, most likely for you to […]

Filed Under: Professional Development, SQLServerCentral Syndication, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: Planning, Time Management, Work-life-balance

A Journey To SQL Authority

October 9, 2012 by John Sansom 60 Comments

I am delighted to welcome to the blog someone who is without a doubt one of the biggest names in our SQL community.  A name that I am sure many, if not all of you will recognise, they’re one of the very first bloggers that I myself began to follow. A SQL community champion, this […]

Filed Under: Blogging, Professional Development, SQLServerCentral Syndication, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: Becoming a DBA, Guest Post

Customers Love The Way I Jiggle – SQL Server Consulting

September 18, 2012 by John Sansom 1 Comment

It’s one of the most enjoyable things about being a SQL Server consultant. I’m not talking about my suspect dance moves here. I’m actually talking about a very powerful problem solving technique. Customers don’t hire SQL Server consultants to work on easy problems. They’ve got those covered already. My customers are some of the smartest […]

Filed Under: Professional Development, SQLServerCentral Syndication, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: Consulting, Problem Solving

Something for the Weekend – SQL Server Links 14/09/12

September 14, 2012 by John Sansom Leave a Comment

It’s SFTW Time, I hope you’ve had a great week! Make sure you don’t miss this weekly round-up of SQL Server Links, community news and technology banter by Subscribing to the Blog Feed.  You can also receive posts via Email. I don’t typically syndicate ( that’s share using RSS technology to you non bloggers) the weekly round-up to SQL Server Central but today […]

Filed Under: Link Posts, SQLServerCentral Syndication, SQLServerPedia Syndication

How To Simply Say You’re a DBA

September 3, 2012 by John Sansom 14 Comments

Have you ever looked back on a conversation where someone asked you “what do you do?” and felt disappointed with your reply? Same here. So how do you explain to someone, who is not familiar with your field, what it is exactly that you do? Just last week my girlfriend and I were out to dinner to […]

Filed Under: Professional Development, SQLServerCentral Syndication, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: Career, Database Administrator, Job Description

The Hollywood DBA

July 18, 2012 by John Sansom 2 Comments

I’m delighted to welcome a fellow Brit to the blog to share their story in today’s guest post. Many of you will have read and enjoyed their work before, being a prolific blogger of awesome content over on Simple-Talk. A renowned personality in the UK SQL community, he is  the founder and leader of the PASS SQL […]

Filed Under: Professional Development, SQLServerCentral Syndication, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: Becoming a DBA, Guest Post

Lunch is for Wimps

July 3, 2012 by John Sansom 3 Comments

DBAs on Wall Street

A real life DBA tale from the trenches with some awesome advice. That’s what one reader chose to share with the community in response to my post What’s it Like to Be a DBA. I found their story compelling and their message really resonated with me, so much so that I wanted to share it with you […]

Filed Under: Professional Development, SQLServerCentral Syndication, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: Becoming a DBA, Guest Post

Guest Post – DBAvolution

June 27, 2012 by mfal 2 Comments

DBAvolution

One of my favourite things about the SQL community is the exquisite diversity of talent of it’s members. Today for the “What’s it Like To Be a DBA” post series, we’re privileged to have with us a gentleman that not only flexes his technical muscles regularly on his blog but who also encourages us to get the grey matter really […]

Filed Under: Professional Development, SQLServerCentral Syndication, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: Becoming a DBA, Guest Post

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