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Posts by Brent Ozar

Brent Ozar
2446 posts
https://www.brentozar.com
I make Microsoft SQL Server go faster. I love teaching, travel, cars, and laughing. I'm based out of Las Vegas. He/him.

Backup Fail: Ma.gnolia goes under

Brent Ozar
Backup and Recovery
7 Comments
Bookmark sharing site Ma.gnolia just had a big problem (not quite clear from the site what it was) and user data was trashed.  They needed to restore from backup. Only one little problem – they didn’t have one. And now they’re out of business. We’ve talked about this before when JournalSpace failed, and I’m sure…
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We Agree: It’s Not My Problem

Brent Ozar
7 Comments
Manager: “It’s come to my attention that the application performance isn’t as good as it should be.  Users are complaining that it takes too long.  Is it fair to say that every query sent to the database should finish in under ten seconds?” Developers: “Yeah.” Database administrators: “Yeah.” Manager: “Okay, we’re in agreement.  Going forward,…
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Syndication Hits the Newspaper Business

Brent Ozar
3 Comments
I’ve blogged about how syndication is the future for news sites like SQLServerPedia and for magazines like GestaltIT, and now it’s time to talk newspapers. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is doing syndication and aggregation right on their home page.  Blog site The Stranger reports that the PI has started running headlines that point straight out to…
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The dangers of building linked servers on the fly

Brent Ozar
3 Comments
Linked servers let users query different database servers from a central SQL Server.  Some uses for this might be: DBA utility scripts – from a central repository server, we could query all of the servers in our environment to check for things like backup dates or configuration settings Consolidated reporting – we could gather results…
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Twitter is What You Make It

Brent Ozar
10 Comments
If you follow people that don’t interest you, then you won’t be interested in Twitter. If you follow people that interest you, then you’ll be interested in Twitter. It’s just that simple. Saying Twitter sucks is like saying the web sucks, or that music sucks, or that talking sucks.  It just indicates that you’re unclear…
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Communication Breakdown

Brent Ozar
9 Comments
Here’s how I see the forms of communication and what they say about who’s sending the message: Twitter or forum message to the public: “I need help, and I’ll take it from anybody who’s available, inside or outside of my company.” Email: “I need you specifically, but it’s not urgent.” Instant Message: “I need you…
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My First Computer

Brent Ozar
14 Comments
That sounds like a Fisher Price toy, and come to think of it, my old Commodore 64 would be outgunned by a lot of toys these days. Commodore 64 Denis Gobo tagged me in a blog entry about our first computers and favorite games.  He was one of those upper-class kids with his fancy-pants Commodore…
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Getting Your Twitter Feed into SQL Server with Tweet-SQL

Brent Ozar
15 Comments
If you’re reading this blog, you’re probably a SQL Server DBA or developer, and you’re probably into Twitter, so you’re probably going to be interested in Rhys Campbell‘s Tweet-SQL. Tweet-SQL is a set of SQL Server stored procedures that let you work with the Twitter API just by writing T-SQL code. You can do things…
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Upcoming SQL Server Online Events

Brent Ozar
0
My job this month: writing! I’m writing a storage chapter for an upcoming SQL Server book, and I’m putting together a dizzying array of presentations for the next couple of months.  My Upcoming Events page has the low-down on each one, but here’s where I’ll be in the next few months: February 12th – Perfmon…
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Things you know now…

Brent Ozar
Professional Development
8 Comments
Mike Walsh (Twitter, blog) tagged me with a great question today: what do you wish you’d have known when you got started? Oh, where to begin… Pick one thing and get really good at it. Every year, there’s going to be some sexy new technology.  Your friends are going to be all over it, and…
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Putting ads on your old WordPress posts

Brent Ozar
Blogging
7 Comments
In my series on How to Get Started Blogging, one of the first things I talked about was deciding what you’re blogging for: money, career, or something else.  That series focused on blogging for your career, but if you’re interested in going after money, there’s a WordPress plugin that I’ve found helpful. Whydowork AdSense will…
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Mirrors aren’t backups

Brent Ozar
Architecture, Backup and Recovery, Database Mirroring
3 Comments
Are you using any of these technologies as a method of database protection? Database mirroring (keeping two database servers synchronized with the same data via SQL 2005/2008) Replication (copying records between databases) Log shipping (copying log files to another server and restoring them immediately) SAN-based mirroring (storing two copies of your database on two different…
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Five Tips to Get Better Vendor Support

Brent Ozar
2 Comments
So you’re completely pissed off that your third party software isn’t working, and you’re getting ready to call the vendor’s support line and let loose a stream of obscenities.  I feel you: I’m using Symantec Antivirus too. <rimshot> But before you pick up the phone, stop and think about a few things that will help…
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StackOverflow adds “bounty” for answering questions

Brent Ozar
1 Comment
I thought StackOverflow was addictive before, but now it’s electronic crack. The latest feature is a reputation bounty.  If you want a question answered faster, you can offer a portion of your own reputation score as a bounty.  The question stays open for 7 days, and it’s on the Featured Questions tab of the site. …
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How To Become an MVP? Measure Your MVP-ness

Brent Ozar
11 Comments
Not Much MVP-ness There’s been a lot of talk lately about how to become a Microsoft MVP (Most Valued Professional).  I’m not an MVP, and I don’t know exactly how to become an MVP, but I know people, and I’m going to let you in on a little secret: it all boils down to a…
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WhiteHouse.gov is not a blog.

Brent Ozar
Blogging
7 Comments
I keep hearing people patting themselves on the back saying, “Look – our President has a blog!” Hmmm.  It doesn’t smell like a blog to me because: There’s no comments There’s no trackbacks There’s no personal touch – it’s very, very clearly written by marketers (and certainly not the President himself) If the White House…
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