14Nov 2008 by Grant Fritchey 1 Comment

PASS Board Elections

PASS
Well, the word is out.  Of the six people running, I know five, four of them reasonably well. I can only vote for three of them. Here's the deal guys, I'm voting for all of you. That's right, each and every one of you gets a vote from me. I visited Chicago once, I think I can manage it. Tom, Lynda, Pat, Louis, Andy, and the other guy, best of luck. But, if you're reading this and wondering who you should vote for, I will supply two names that you must vote for. It's up to you to figure out the third (fourth & fifth if you're following the Chicago method with me). In no particular order: Because I think he really can lead positive change in this great organization, I…
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12Nov 2008 by Grant Fritchey 4 Comments

Still more on Andy Warren and the Pass Board

PASS
This sounds like it might have been an interesting phone call. Just the sound of it points out why I think Andy would be a great addition to the board (along with someone else I know. I'll start lobbying for him when I find out whether or not he's on the ballot this year). He has ideas. Now, I don't mind working. I'll certainly pitch in and help out. I even lead efforts. I don't have ideas. Andy clearly does. If no other concept stood out, the ninety days & out approach to trying out some new stuff in PASS sounded like a great idea. It would have been interesting to listen in to the phone call. I'm also impressed with the method of vetting people for the board. I…
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10Nov 2008 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

PASS Summit

PASS
The PASS Summit starts with the pre-conference seminars in just a week. For anyone interested, I'll be blogging once a day from the Summit. I won't be naming names from any of the drunken revels, so you'll need to go elsewhere for that information. As you can see from the side-bar, I'm presenting this year. If you're attending the Summit, please see my session. I'll be going over how to use the Visual Studio Team System Database Edition to deploy to multiple environments. Yes, it sounds a bit dull but if you need to use the tool, I think you'll find the session very helpful. I'm going on Tuesday from 3:00 to 4:15PM. I was competing with Gert Drapers, but it looks like things have changed and it's going to be…
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06Nov 2008 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

More on Andy Warren’s PASS Board Application

PASS
He's continuing to post about it, so I'm going to keep linking to it. I may be able to drive a hit or two his way. See, Andy already provided a service for the community. I had no idea how the nominees were selected. Now we at least have a sense of some of the inner-workings and it's interesting stuff. Not too much of that "inside baseball" tang either.
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01Oct 2008 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Simple Talk Editorial on PASS

PASS
If you don't subscribe to the Simple-Talk newsletter, why not? This month's newsletter is chock full of interesting stuff, a DBA checklist from Brad McGehee, a workbench on keys, an article on how covering indexes are faster than clustered indexes (they are too), and an article on why one DBA is learning PowerShell (I want to, but my spare time is taken up with writing a new book). All great stuff and worth reading. I'm going to be reading all these articles, but the most fascinating piece of the current newsletter is the editorial by Tony Davis. I was actually a little shocked by it. I'm a PASS volunteer for the Special Interest Groups and the Editorial Committee. I've attended the last three PASS events. I'm the current president and…
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10Sep 2008 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

PASS Summit

PASS, Tools, Visual Studio
It looks like this year is going to be pretty good. They've expanded the program. If you're not going, you should consider it. Personally, I'm pretty excited. I'm presenting our build and deployment process using Visual Studio Team System Database Edition. I've got the first half of the presentation down cold because it's how we've been doing our deployments for a couple of years now. The second half concerns me a bit. I'm showing the new release that works with SQL Server 2008. Unfortunately that new release isn't done and I keep having to update my code and slides as the new versions come out with different functionality. I'm more than a little bit nervous about that part of the presentation. I wish there was a way to bounce it…
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27May 2008 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Be Afraid

PASS
I mean me, not you. I've been accepted to present at PASS. I'm jazzed and totally freaked at the same time. I put in two abstracts, one based on my book, "Dissecting SQL Server Execution Plans" and the other based on an article I wrote published at SQL Server Central, "Deploying with DBPro to Multiple Environments." Why then am I freaked? I've spent a year delving into execution plans. I won't say I'm an expert, but I'm comfortable. I've been using DBPro for two years now, but I'm hardly eating and breathing it on a daily basis. Well, I wasn't. From this point forward I'll be neck deep in it daily. Watch for posts on this topic.
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28Mar 2008 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

SQL Server 2008 Free Instance

Uncategorized
If you don't want to risk blowing up your laptop (like I did) and you're not interested in setting up and maintaining a virtual server, but you still want to test SQL Server 2008. Then, PASS (Professional Association of SQL Server Users), Dell & MaximumASP have a solution. Just go to SQL Server Beta. You can set up a private instance and it will persist between sessions.
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