05May 2017 by Grant Fritchey 1 Comment

Redgate Alexa Contest Winners!

Redgate Software
A couple of weeks ago we had a small contest here to pick a skill for Alexa. The entries were all wonderful, but I could only pick five as winners with one of them being the top winner. Thanks everyone for playing. In no particular order, here are the four runner's up, followed by the final winner along with my comments. Adrian Porter:  Alexa, let's get real here! Please protect me from my stupid self. Take whatever measures needed. And for the final time, I don't want to play chess, let's play Global Thermonuclear War! [major points for an excellent nerd reference and one of my favorite movies] Zingiber: Alexa, drive me to work [You have to love the short simple set of instructions here, plus, extra time to read…
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01Apr 2014 by Grant Fritchey 15 Comments

SQL Server 2014 New Defaults

T-SQL
Today, April 1st, 2014, marks the release of SQL Server 2014. There are tons and tons of great new methods and functions and processes within the product. We're all going to be learning about them for quite a while to come. One of the most exciting though is one of the changes to the defaults. In the past there's been a lot of debate around how best to configure your databases. What cost threshold should be set for parallelism, the max degree of parallelism, memory settings, auto growth, and all sorts of other settings affect how your databases work. But, Microsoft has finally done something smart. They've bowed to the pressure of hundreds and hundreds of DBAs, Database Developers and Developers around the world. They've finally done the one thing…
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