Early in my career I had experienced the same issue so I quickly searched my code snippets and found where I had used COLLATE DATABASE_DEFAULT after each of the comparison columns.  For example

SELECT COLUMN
FROM TABLE_A
INNER JOIN TABLE_B
WHERE TABLE_A.COLUMN COLLATE DATABASE_DEFAULT = TABLE_B.COLUMN COLLATE DATABASE_DEFAULT

If you experience the error “Cannot resolve collation conflict for equal to operator” I hope this solution helps you out.

(BACKUP LOG [DB_NAME] TO DISK = ‘DRIVE:\PATH\DB_NAME_LOG.BAK’)

Now lets suppose you are working with a production system and something dreadful happens to the database.   Lets assume that you have a transactional database and take TLOG backups every 10 minutes. Now lets suppose at 2:00 in the afternoon a regular TLOG backup is taken and at 2:07 there is a hardware problem where your MDF file becomes corrupt. You now have to restore from backup. What happens to those 7 minutes of transactions?

Without recovering the tail end of the log, this data is gone. Since it was only the MDF file that was corrupt or lost, we can still take a log backup even without the MDF. To do so use

(BACKUP LOG [DB_NAME] TO DISK = ‘DRIVE:\PATH\DB_NAME_LOG.BAK’ WITH NO_TRUNCATE)

The key here is the NO_TRUNCATE statement.  Using NO_TRUNCATE allows you to be able to backup the transaction log without the database being online.  If your database is online you can just take a regular transaction log backup.

If you want to see this in action, check out my video.  In this video I go rouge and delete my MDF file and demonstrate how to backup and restore the tail end of the log.

How to backup and restore the tail end of a transaction log

I had the pleasure of attending SQL Saturday 112 this past weekend.  This was my second time speaking at a SQL Saturday in Birmingham.  I was selected to present two sessions again this year in the first and second time slot.  I started off with “Getting Involved and Getting Ahead”.  This session is all about the SQL Community and how volunteering and giving of your time can pay huge dividends in your career.  You get to learn so much more and at such an advanced rate that the sky is the limit.  While helping others you gain as much or more.  The contacts you make alone are work the investment of your time.

The second session I gave was a brand new session called “Know Backups and Know Recovery”.  I presented this session in March to the Columbus GA SQL Users Group.  I really enjoy this session and hope to make it my primary session I give.  In this session I cover best practices with make FULL, DIFFERENTIAL, and TLOG backups of your databases.  I find that most people are at least doing FULL and Transaction logs.  About 25% do weekly FULL and Daily DIFFERENTIAL backups.  I also have found that most attendees have not practiced restores to include their DIFF and Transaction log backups.  In this session I demo using a script to generate the restore scripts of the last FULL, DIFF and all transaction log backups since the last respective FULL or DIFFERENTIAL backup.  I also demo FILEGROUP backups, peace meal restores and even a TAIL LOG backup and restore.

In between giving these two sessions and the remainder of the day I helped work the RedGate booth and PASS Booth.  I had a great deal of fun helping to spread the word about all things PASS and helping to field questions about many of the RedGate products.  The organization team for SQL Saturday 112 did an excellent job putting on this event.  I really like the speaker shirt and the bags the team got.

The event location at Jefferson State Community College was great.  Large classrooms and a centrally located vendor area.  There was excellent signage leading up the event, schedules posted on the doors to the rooms, a very well put together event guide and tons of drinks, donuts and coffee.

I will definitely be back to this event as long as they are willing to have me.

My slides can be found on the SQL Saturday website here.

I am not one of these anti PC sorta guys, but I do love my MacBook Pro.  I have owned a PC since 1993 when I got my Packard Bell 386 with Windows 3.1.  Even with my MacBook I have 9 Windows flavored VM’s on it.  To be honest, I have never had Windows run better than as a VM on my MacBook.  Due to having so many VM’s the 8 GB of ram I had just didn’t cut it on some occasions.

With wanting to dive more into Windows Failover Clustering and wanting to experiment more with SQL 2012 and “Always On” I knew I needed a bit more horsepower to do all the playing and studying I want “need” to do.  I posed the question to a superior and got the green light to make a modest increase in memory.  I can not wait to put this 16 GB of ram to the test.

Next I hope to get a Thunderbolt enclosure with an SSD to put a few VM’s on.

In just two days SQL Saturday 107 will be in full swing.  Tomorrow begins their precon with the infamous Kalen Delaney.  Those who were lucky enough to sign up and get one of the coveted spots are in for a treat.  Thanks to the Idera ACE program I was blessed to spend three full days with Kalen and pick up a lot of new tips and tricks to help me progress in my career.

I will be presenting two sessions at SQL Saturday 107.  My “You Inherited a Neglected Database” session and “It’s TEMPDB Why Should You Care”.  I recently presented my TEMPDB session in Atlanta and had a rough go at it.  Lets just say I had a very humbling experience and learned a few valuable things as a presenter.  The biggest issue I had was being very nervous.  I had a two fellow ACE’s in the room and several other folks that I know very well or know of.  The room was also at capacity (50+ folks).  I shall be much more calm in Houston and slow down my presentation.  Even though I had a few bumps in my session, I had a very large number of people approach me telling me it was an “awesome” session.  That made me feel much better.

If you are in the Houston area, I hope you are planning to attend this wonderful FREE event on Saturday.

“Why I joined Linchpin People as a Teammate”

It was announced publicly this past weekend at SQL Saturday #111 that I have joined Linchpin People as their first teammate.  My friend Andy who is also a Chief Servant Officer of Linchpin made the announcement during the speaker dinner and gave me an official Linchpin dress shirt.

During the remainder of the speaker dinner and throughout the SQL Saturday event the next day people kept asking me about Linchpin.  I would explain to them the culture of Linchpin and tell them the short story of how it came to be that I was joining such a great outfit.

The primary question I kept getting was ” Are you joining Linchpin full time as a consultant?”.  I had to explain that I was only doing so part time at this point in my career.  (Night and weekend type work)  I would then explain my current job and what all has happened with me in the DBA role over the past 4 years.  I was recently promoted to a lead role and have 4 DBA’s that I am responsible for including mentoring and helping them grow in their career.

My current job is wonderful, I really enjoy the folks I work with and have numerous really cool projects going on.  I started the side business primarily to make a few extra bucks to help fund trips to SQL Saturday’s.  I really enjoy getting to travel around the country speaking and teaching others what I know.  I also get to learn a great deal from attending other sessions and networking with the SQL Community.  In forming my LLC, this awesome opportunity arose with Linchpin.  How could I possibly say no to working with Andy Leonard, Brian Moran, Mike Walsh and Robert Pearl.

It is really nice being the team lead at work, but it is even better being the dumbest guy in the group with Linchpin.  There is so much for me to learn from these guys.  I am really looking forward to absorbing as much as I can from each of them.

I was chosen to speak at SQL Saturday 111 in Atlanta GA this weekend.  I will be doing my session called “It’s TEMPDB, Why Should You Care”.  In this session I cover the importance of TEMPDB and how best to configure TEMPDB in your environment.  Not only do I cover a lot of material on slides which are available to download on the event website, I also break out into a live demo demonstrating contention on TEMPDB and discuss how best to eliminate or reduce the contention.

I have presented this session at a number of other events and always get positive feedback on the technical material in the presentation.  If you don’t know why TEMPDB is important or have not configured TEMPDB after a base install, come hear me speak or just shoot me an email.

Linchpin People, LLC is an organization led by Brian Moran and Andy Leonard with Mike Walsh and Robert Pearl as Partners.  For those who do not know about Linchpin, they are a technology company with a focus on the Microsoft Database stack on the front, but behind the scene they are about developing people.  The company values are called the Service 22:40 which is modeled after Matthew (22:37-40).  This is what some call the “Golden Rule”

This is where I fit in.  First I get to be mentored by these wonderful guys, but more importantly I get to keep giving back to the community in more ways.  I recently started a small consulting firm to be able to focus on helping small to mid size companies that need the expertise of a senior level database professional.  The focus of my company is to baseline the organization, standardize installations, backup and recovery, disaster recovery, high availability, tune and get the systems running like they should.  I train the accidental dba who is responsible for the environment and then hopefully land a maintenance contract with the company to do periodic health checks.

My primary responsibility will remain focused on the large corporation where I am currently employed.  Being a DBA typically means “Doing Business After-hours” and any contracts I get with Radney Consulting or affiliation with Linchpin will typically fall into a night and weekend endeavor.  I can’t go repartioning a disk, creating a bunch of indexes, reconfiguring tempdb, or rearranging data and log files during business hours on a production system now can I?

I am very excited to be joining my friends in helping them build a great company and having a far greater reach to enrich others lives by sharing my life lessons and SQL knowledge with others.

Linchpin People = ”Changing one career at a time”

I was recently selected to speak at SQL Saturday 107 in Houston TX.  I am really excited to be selected from such a great group of folks who submitted.  This will be my second time speaking in TX, but my first time to Houston.

I will already be in Houston for my introduction into the 2012 Idera ACE program and enjoying some early benefits of the program.  It will be a lot of fun getting to hang out with some of the existing ACE’s and most of the new ones.  I am truly a blessed individual.

If you happen to be reading this and live around Houston, make sure to register for the event.  For those not around Houston, well we have LOTS of SQL Saturday’s all over the world.  Make sure to attend one, or plan your own.  Check them out at http://www.sqlsaturday.com

SQL Saturday 107

Expectations are high when you attend an Immersion Event.  Many will argue that it is the best training available.  I haven’t attended every possible training out there but I have attended training from the numerous “training centers”, attended a lot of SQL Saturday’s and three PASS Summits.  Of all the training I have attended, the Immersion Events are the best.

Anytime that you put Paul Randal, Kimberly Tripp, Joe Sack and Jonathan Kehayias in the same room talking about topics they love you are in for a treat.  I will tell you that topics range from consolidation, virtualization, backups, restores, clustering, mirroring, replication, design options and more.  The fact you can find this information at SQL Skills I don’t mind sharing it.

For me, each day I was able to learn something pretty significant that will have direct impact at work, thus each day the cost of the training was justified.  How cool is that.

Thursday night at these events are community night.  Several attendees get to present a 15 minute session.  I was fortunate to be able to be one of those.  I presented “Getting Involved and Getting Ahead”, my session was on all things SQL Community.

If you ever have a change to attend, you are well feed both physically and intellectually.  Don’t miss the chance to get immersed in SQL Server.