SelectViews Show
Donald Farmer is on the show — I sat down with him to learn about PowerPivot, the new add-in for Excel that helps you in working with information from your SQL Server in new ways… *fast and easy* ways. I had it wrong (as you’ll see in the show) – so Donald went through a demo, explained and talked through some of the amazing things they’re doing with this new tool. If you’re wondering what it’s all about – this is a great show to see with demos, explanations and a lot more.
[Watch the SelectViews Show Here]
Featured Article(s)
Practical Top 10 Tips For SQL Server Optimization
Check out this Top Ten Tips List with hands on actions that will improve the performance of your applications. By following this way of thinking, you will surely come out with a lot more tweaks to improve the response and life of your SQL Server based software.
Best Things to Focus On?
What do you think are the most leveraged things to focus on for a SQL DBA? I was talking with someone faced with needing to understand more about their server farm (11 servers) and managing them. We went through normal stuff of backups, but there’s more to it than that – more that they "should" be doing.
We ended up looking at policy-based management stuff, but of course they have a mixed environment like so many of us do in terms of SQL Server versions. I started doing some research into tools or approaches that could be used to work around the version issue (Policy-based management is a feature of SQL Server 2008), and came across the Enterprise Policy Management Framework. I’m going to be spending some time going through it more, but after an initial installation and some tests, it looks very promising. It’s on CodePlex – so you can check it out here – and install it to take a look.
The reason we got to the whole thing of policy-based management of systems was leverage, plain and simple. I was looking to point them in the direction of providing some solid oversight of the systems with an eye toward growth in the future.
Take a look – if you’re looking to get your arms around your systems and start applying some standardization, this might be a good tool for your own systems.
Upcoming Webcasts –
Avoiding a SharePoint Disaster
Whether you’ve already implemented SharePoint, or are only preparing to, backup and recovery should be a priority. Discover how to use SharePoint’s out of the box backup and restore capabilities to protect your data in case of calamity. This session will take a quick trip through the built in backup options available with SharePoint; suggest some tips, tricks, and best practices; and focus on some techniques concerning how to restore that data before disaster strikes.
Presented by: CA Callahan
> Register Now
> Live date: 2/3/2010 at 12:00 Pacific
Optimizing Backup and Restore Performance
As databases continue to grow in size, the time it takes for backup and recovery grows in length of time. Attend this session and learn methods to minimize the time it takes for your backups to complete, as well as how to minimize the amount of time it takes to recover.
Presented by: Thomas LaRock
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> Live date: 2/10/2010 at 12:00 Pacific