At the MVP Summit last week, I was talking with fellow Dallas-area tweep Sean McCown about our local SQL Server user group membership. I think our group is unique because of its sheer size; we typically have between 70 and 90 people at our monthly meetings, with a mailing list that goes out to between 600 and 800 people. So…
Way back during my days as a retail clerk, I had a customer who had a, um, clothing malfunction. The store was very busy one afternoon, and as he approached me to ask a question, it was readily apparent that his barn door was left open. As discreetly as I could, I leaned in and whispered to him that he…
A couple of weeks ago, it was announced that the SQL Saturday franchise was voluntarily transferred to PASS. This change of ownership could be a good thing for SQL Saturday, but I do have some questions and concerns. Let me say for starters that the SQL Saturday franchise is near and dear to me, since it was one of the…
I’d like to share a networking success story. Last year, I blogged about my experience at the PASS Summit of 2005, where I was essentially a wallflower and didn’t really do any networking. Since then, I’ve realized its importance and have embraced professional networking as a key component in a successful career. Ever since then I have carried through on…
A relatively common requirement in ETL processing is to break records into disparate outputs based on an alphabetical split on a range of letters. A practical example of this would be a work queue for collections staff based on last name; records would be pulled from a common source and then separated into multiple outputs based on a the Customer…