Saturday, September 13, 2014

Houston TechFest 2014: SQL Admin Best Practices with DMV's

Awesome crowd this morning for my SQL Admin Best Practices with DMV's presentation at Houston TechFest 2014, thanks very much for attending! There were some exceptionally useful questions raised today, great job to my audience.

Here is the .zip file as promised for my presentation slide deck and .sql files, including the new content for SQL 2014. Download here

Wednesday, September 03, 2014

Restoring Toggle Results Window as Ctrl+R in SSMS

Recent versions of SQL Server Management Studio have unmapped Control+R as the toggle for the Results window in a typical query window. Each time I work on a new SSMS environment or refresh my laptop, I find myself seeking out how to restore this setting. This blog post is as much a reference for my future self as anything.

Instead of the results pane, you may instead see at the bottom left corner of SSMS the following messages:
"(Ctrl+R) was pressed. Waiting for second key of chord..." or then "The key combination (Ctrl+R, Ctrl+R) is not a command."

Here's how to remap the Results pane to Ctrl+R, including a picture below.
  1. In SSMS, go to Tools, Options.
  2. Under Environment, click on Keyboard.
  3. In the Show Commands containing box, you're looking for "Window.ShowResultsPane".
  4. Change the "Use new shortcut in" dropdown to "SQL Query Editor." 
    • Note: This step is important - mapping Ctrl+R to "Global" won't work.
  5. Click in the "Press shortcut keys" field and hit Ctrl+R on your keyboard. Click the Assign button.
  6. Click OK.
  7. In your query windows, you can now Ctrl+R to toggle the results window all you like.



Updated: 20180105 because again I needed to this blog post as a reference myself, added the chord messages to improve SEO.

Tuesday, September 02, 2014

The Nine SQL Server Careers

Microsoft SQL Server is a mature and broad technology platform that supports a diverse set of careers - this blog post is an attempt to provide technical detail to my personal theory on careers in the Microsoft SQL Server world.

A mid-tier SQL Server professional who may carry the title "Database Administrator" could find career traction with high-level skill in only three or four of these categories. It would be a rare accomplishment to find someone with honest expertise in all nine of these buckets, and most mid-tier SQL Server professionals have significant experience with no more than six of these roles.

It is also important for any IT professional to be aware of his/her limitations. We should all "know what we don't know," so this blog post is an effort to quantify these items. It is also very likely that the modern "DBA" possesses skill sets in .NET and other surrounding technologies which I do not aim to include here.