First round of SQLServerPedia syndicated bloggers

Wow – that went better than I could have hoped.  When I first wrote about syndicating your blog at SQLServerPedia, I figured we’d get maybe a handful of bloggers taking us up on it.  Instead, setting up syndication is now my primary job duty, hahaha.

We’ve got more people waiting in the wings (more on that in a sec) but here’s our first round of syndicated bloggers:

Bob Horkay of LifeAsBob.com

Some of Bob’s recent blog posts include:

• How to alter a table’s column from varchar to datetime – sounds easy, but the way SQL Server Management Studio does it generates a lot of overhead.  Bob shows a faster way with less production impact.
• Problems with the IsDate function – this was the subject of a recent StackOverflow bounty question, too.  The IsDate and IsNumeric functions don’t always work the way you’d expect, and to get around it, you may have to code a custom extended stored procedure.  (I’m not kidding.)
• His home-brewed beer recipe – now, obviously this falls outside of the SQL Server syndication section, but just looking at the pictures makes my mouth water. (It’s five o’clock somewhere – here, actually!)

Jason Strate of Digineer.com

Also known as h4ppyd4y on Twitter, Jason’s been blogging a lot lately, including:

• Presenting at the SSWUG Virtual Conference – like me and Tom LaRock, among many others, Jason’s doing a set of sessions for this spring’s conference.
• The Over() Clause – I’ve never used this, and I swear I’m going to read this article and pay attention.  I keep hearing about this.
• Searching the cache for execution plans – when a user comes running in saying a stored proc was slow five minutes ago, you can find out why by looking at its execution plan after the fact.  Jason shows how.

Michelle Ufford of SQLFool.com

I’ve mentioned Michelle aka SQLFool before because of her index maintenance script contributions at SQLServerPedia, and now she’s contributing blog entries too!  Some of her recent posts:

• Fragmentation on replicated tables – replication means copying data from one place to another, but not necessarily maintenance statements.  Michelle explains the important difference.
• Index clean-up scripts – before you make new indexes to improve performance, are you sure you need the ones you’ve already got?
• Indexing for partitioned tables – doing partitioning is one of those cutting-edge things that isn’t as well-documented as it could be.  Michelle talks about why you may not want to partition your indexes the same way you partition your tables.

Mike Walsh of StraightPathSQL.com

Also known as mike_walsh on Twitter, he writes a straightforward (get it?) blog about SQL with some good business advice like:

• New vendor interview – before a vendor foists a crappy product on you that requires SA logins, wouldn’t it be nice to ask a few basic questions?  Mike lists his.
• Do you focus too much on your backups? – like my buddy Bryan Oliver always says, there’s only one reason DBAs do backups: to restore.  Focus on your restores.
• Empirical evidence – I had a question recently from a user who kept insisting that I tell him what solution would be the fastest for his specific environment.  There’s only one way to find out: test it there.

Tom LaRock of SQLBatman.com

PASS Board of Directors member, caped crusader, and blogger, with recent highlights like:

• SQL Server 2008 Training from Microsoft – Tom attended a hands-on lab with tutorials on the new features in SQL 2008. He gives a walkthrough of each session.
• My Vision for the PASS SIGs – want an inside peek at what he’s got planned for the Professional Association for SQL Server? Sadly, it doesn’t involve bacon, but…
• Whale Bacon – like Bob Horkay’s home-brewed beer post, this one won’t be syndicated either, but it’s funny as hell.

There’s many more to come.  I’m working with several other bloggers to get their RSS feeds set up and get MySQL to stop crashing when I import big feeds like Jason Massie’s.  It keeps saying something about an MVP-ness size problem.  Odd.  Will follow up tomorrow with more bloggers.

I’d like to thank each of these bloggers personally for helping expand the community knowledge base.  They’re writing really good, useful stuff, and hopefully by getting them more exposure, we’re doing a favor to all of the community.