Archive for April, 2012

Blogging Tools: BlogDesk Review

As a blogger, you have several options available to you when it comes to writing posts.В  You can write them online, directly inside whatever platform you’re using, be it WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, etc.В  If you prefer to write posts offline, you can use a text editor like Word or WordPad for the writing process, and [...]

April 30, 2012  Tags:   Posted in: Non-SQL Stuff, Professional Development  No Comments

Slacking Off: Totally TED

Lately I’ve taken to watching TED talks in the evening.В  They’re thought-provoking, usually entertaining, and, best of all when watching late at night, short.В  I have to control myself though, I could spend hours jumping from one great topic to another.В  Really, I should probably watch something less thought-provoking right before bed, like the Rockford [...]

April 27, 2012  Tags:   Posted in: Non-SQL Stuff  2 Comments

The Importance of a SQL Server Inventory

Pop quiz! It’s time to true-up with Microsoft, what are your current license counts? Operations needs to schedule maintenance on ServerY, what applications will be impacted? A developer wants to change the password for a certain login, what linked servers will be affected? Are there any databases that haven’t been backed up in a week [...]

April 23, 2012  Tags: , ,   Posted in: General  11 Comments

Custom TDS Endpoints: Listening on multiple ports

Last time, I talked about how clients communicate with SQL Server through TDS endpoints and how to disable endpoints to prevent user access. Today we’ll see how we can configure SQL Server to listen on multiple ports through the use of user-defined endpoints. Create a new TDS endpoint There can only be one Shared Memory [...]

April 18, 2012  Tags: , , ,   Posted in: Internals  No Comments

TDS Endpoints: SQL Server’s “Listener”

In the land of Oracle, if you want to prevent user access to your database, you stop the listener. Without that agent running, you can still connect to the database locally, via shared memory, but all TCP/IP connectivity is disabled. As a DBA, this is pretty handy if you need time to perform maintenance tasks [...]

April 17, 2012  Tags: , , , ,   Posted in: Internals  3 Comments