Perhaps you have heard about a runbook--the documented instructions you should follow in the event of a disaster or some situation where an outage occurs.  Instructions are great for IT folks as they give a reference to follow--and they don't freak out even if we might. They don't, however, include instructions for everyone--what about the folks that aren't tapping away on the keyboard?  In this episode, we chat with Greg Moore about his experience in emergency situations outside of IT and how we might apply these principles in our environment.

Whether you are directly in the line of fire or support those that do, we think you will find this conversation interesting.

The show notes from today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2018/02/13/episode-124-beyond-the-runbook-dr-organization. Have fun on the SQL Trail!

Listener Eduardo Cervantes wanted to get our take on what developers should do when they get admin access to a database.  We take on this challenge and I give 5 points you might consider if you are a developer with admin access to the SQL Server.  As Uncle Ben in Spiderman quotes, "With great power comes great responsibility."  We hope you use yours wisely.

The show notes from today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2018/02/14/episode-123-top-5-things-to-know-when-getting-admin-access. Have fun on the SQL Trail!

Does not play well with others. Is this description appropriate for some of the queries in your database?  In this episode, we explore the role behind isolation levels--why they are important, what they help prevent, and why so many people try to get around the rules they try to enforce.

The show notes from today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/12/20/episode-122-isolation-levels. Have fun on the SQL Trail!

I have heard it said "People don't quit jobs--they quit managers".  At a recent event, I decided to ask people what they thought the qualities of a good manager are.  Perhaps you aren't thinking of getting into management; however, at some point in your career you will have the opportunity to lead.  We share your thoughts and comment on the challenges of having the qualities of a good manager.

The show notes from today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/12/14/episode-121-what-makes-a-good-manager. Have fun on the SQL Trail!

Shouldn't they have fixed that instead of putting out all these new features?  That might be what you are thought when you saw the title for today's episode.  SQL Injection is still a big deal in today's databases and we are pleased to have Bert Wagner on the program to talk with us about how it can affect you and the applications you protect.

One of the most difficult aspects to deal with SQL Injection is to decide who is responsible for dealing with it?  Bert does a great job giving us some insights on what he has seen work and we invite you to give us your comments about how you have gone about trying to evade a SQL Injection attack.

The show notes from today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/12/06/episode-120-sql-injection. Have fun on the SQL trail!

At first glance you might think our podcast topic is from way out in left field; however, as you think about it there are a number of reasons we should be talking about GitHub.  Even if you don't need a public source control repository for creating code, GitHub is becoming the preferred place for creators to publish their content and the ability to interact with other is extremely value.  In this episode we give some of our thoughts around getting started with GitHub and how it might differ from some of the other options out there.

Don't forget to leave your 'Tips and Tricks' on the podcast page.  If we get enough submissions, we will start that new segment in January.

The show notes from today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/11/29/episode-119-should-i-get-involved-with-github. Have fun on the SQL Trail!

After having attended PASS Summit and seeing all the new features coming it out, it can be very easy to overlook the basics--they are boring.  These features have been around forever.  This may be true, but they still play an important role and ignoring them won't help get you those fancy new features any time soon.

In this episode, our topic is index maintenance, with an emphasis on what has changed or what might change.  Is the query store feature going to impact the way we maintain our indexes?  We invite one our favorite guests, Sean McCown back to talk with us and give some of his thoughts.

The show notes from today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/11/24/index-maintenance. Have fun on the SQL Trail!

Have you ever had a week without a Wednesday?  Me neither, so for this episode, we recap our experience at PASS Summit and talk about all the amazing compañeros we met and give some thoughts around our very first meetup.  It was so much fun to meet everyone and both Steve and I gave sessions, which was a great experience--and a first for me.

One, we both realized after the fact is, we are not good at social media or taking pictures!  We apologize we don't have a bit more to share on that front, but hey--we do have faces for radio.

The show notes from today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/11/15/episode-117-pass-summit-retrospective/. Have fun on the SQL Trail!

If you have ever worked with Microsoft support, you probably came across the PssDiag tool they use to collect information about your environment.  My experience with the tool is it always seemed, well--a bit clunky.  Now, it does collect lots of information and seemed to be a bit overwhelming when I was first a DBA.  Fast forward a few years and PssDiag was not a tool I use anymore and was not sure if anyone outside of Microsoft was using it.  I run into Jared Poche in Raleigh and he mentions he really likes the tool and mentions some of the improvements they have made over the years.  Well, you can guess where this is heading.

We talk with Jared about his experience with the tool and cover some of the basics about how you might go about using this tool in your environment.  There are two pieces to this tool, the first is the utility that collects the data and the second is the reporting piece SQL Nexus.

Are you using PssDiag?  Let us know if the comments below.

The show notes for today's episode can be found at  http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/11/07/episode-116-are-people-still-using-pssdiag. Have fun on the SQL trail!

It was a beautiful idea.  Gather together with a group of our podcast listeners in a conference type format and find ways for us to connect and help each grow.  I had seen it down in other events; however, I wanted to add my own flavor.  I wanted this to be different.  While the event turned out great and we got good marks from the attendees, we didn't have the response we were hoping for.  In this episode of the podcast, we have our companero conference retrospective.

We try to give our honest feedback about what we did well, what could have been improved, and what the attendees reported.  I can't say enough about the help I got from our speakers--Jonathan Stewart, Kevin Feasel, Randolph West, Tracy Boggiano, and Doug Purnell.  They were awesome and the event was much simpler because of them and their commitment.  They are truly my companeros on the SQL trail.

The show notes for today's episode can be found at  http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/10/31/episode-115-the-companero-conference-retrospective. Have fun on the SQL trail!