10 Jun 2010
By Bob Pusateri

Why My Newest Laptop Is A Mac

Hardware, Thoughts
I've never been a fan of Apple.  Despite making a living off SQL Server, I don't consider myself to be a Windows fanboy by any stretch of the imagination either, but I never imagined that I would buy a Mac. One of the easiest arguing points back in the day was the availability of software.  Games on a mac?  There was that sliding apple puzzle thing, that's about it.  (Ok, there were more than that, but if I couldn't play Doom II on it I wasn't interested!)  Then they switched to Intel processors and OSX got better and better.  The…
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07 Jun 2010
By Bob Pusateri

T-SQL Tuesday #007: My Favorite 2008 Feature

Indexing, SQL Server, SQLServerPedia Syndication, TSQL Tuesday
This post is my contribution to T-SQL Tuesday #007, hosted this month by the SQLChicken himself, Jorge Segarra (Blog | Twitter). Since I'm a bad DBA and have yet to get my hands on a copy of R2, I'll make use of the rule that we can discuss any feature from 2008.  My favorite is filtered indexes, as they were the solution to an issue I had been trying to fix for 5 years. The Background In a former life, I spent several years working as a building inspector for one of Chicago's western suburbs.  It quickly became evident that…
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04 Jun 2010
By Bob Pusateri

Tips for Upgrading SQL Server Versions

SQL Server
At my previous employer I took part in several projects that involved migrating databases not only to new hardware but also to new versions of SQL Server.  We upgraded machines running the 2000 and 2005 versions of SQL Server to 2008.  Here's how we went about doing it, and some helpful hints we figured out along the way. Disclaimers I'm fully aware there are lots of ways to migrate hardware and data between machines and database versions, I'll just be talking about the way we did it.  We were fortunate enough to not have to worry about downtime, as this…
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27 May 2010
By Bob Pusateri

Redundancy and College Marching Band

Thoughts
Every once in a while I hope to use this blog to investigate the lighter side of database/computing topics.  After all, redundancy can (and should!) exist in many more places than corporate network architectures.  One of the places you may be surprised to hear about redundancy is college marching bands, which I feel more than qualified to talk about. That's right folks, I'm a bando and proud of it.  I played clarinet from 4th grade all the way through college, and was part of a marching band for 9 years.  Yes, I did go to band camp, had some great…
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25 May 2010
By Bob Pusateri

Seven Free Applications You Should Try

Software
I think all of us who sit in front of a computer for a living have a few free programs that we're particularly fond of.  Here's what I'm liking as of late. Notepad++ My favorite general-purpose text editor.  Along with pretty much anything else, I find myself writing a lot of T-SQL code in here and then copying/pasting into SSMS.  My favorite features include column editing mode, double-click searches, and a wide variety of plugins.  Supports syntax highlighting for a ton of languages out of the box, but extensions are available that allow it to handle even more.  I used…
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