That’s right! I will solve a performance issue by adding a UNION into the query. Interested? Read on! I recently encountered a curious issue with a query. The query itself wasn’t exactly rocket science: it read data from a few tables and calculated the start and the end dates of a contract in the SELECT statement. In an outer query there’s a range join with a date dimension to explode the data over the different months.

Six months ago, I started something in the USA, with much support, that could literally be considered starting from ground zero. Through the reputation and standing I’ve created in the world of SQL Server and Data, I was able to form a business that, in under that six months, was successful to anyone that is in the technology side of consulting. Success is based on revenue, client success rates, client repeat work base, and pulling enough to forecast a track that easily retained a need for hiring on talented people like Mickey Stuewe (Blog | Twitter).

I had the opportunity to attend (and be a technical lead for!) SQL Cruise Caribbean 2015 in February 2015. This was my second SQL Cruise – my first was as an attendee on SQL Cruise Alaska 2012. I loved the first event, so my expectations were fairly high – and they were completely exceeded. The mantra for SQL Cruise is Learn, Network, Relax, and Grow. This is not just a phrase – I’m an example of this in action.

When we build sites using an AMD library like RequireJS, we will have a long list of files that need to be downloaded when someone uses the site. More files means more trips to the server and more download time. Minifying files and using gzip can speed up the download times, but neither affects the Round Trip Time (RTT) that even a cache validation incurs, clogging up a request pipeline just to ask the server if an ETag or last modified date is still valid.

This month’s PASSMN User Group meeting will be held on Tuesday, February 17th at 4PM at the Microsoft Technology Center (MTC) in Edina. This meeting is being sponsored by our friends at Pragmatic Works. A huge thanks to PW for their generous sponsorship! PASSMN is excited to open the monthly meeting with a short talk from Tony Malarz on using Ola Hallengren’s scripts. Ola Hallengren Scripts Abstract: The Ola Hallengren scripts cover backups, index and stats maintenance, and checkdb.

This month's T-SQL Tuesday is hosted by Kenneth Fisher (blog | twitter) and its subject is about security. Security is one of those subjects that most DBAs have to deal with regardless of specialty. So as something we all have to work with at some point or another what are some tips you'd like to share? What's the best security design? You've picked up a legacy system and the security is awful, how do you fix it?

I have the pleasure and privilege to announce that I was awarded with the “Author of the Year” award at the MSSQLTips.com website! I am humbled by the recognition of my fellow peers in the SQL Server community and I’d like to thank all of you, the #sqlfamily, for voting. Special shout-out to Jeffery Yao, who won the Rookie award. Let’s make 2015 an even better year with more dazzling tips!

As you might have realized, this is not the title of an Agatha Christie book, but rather about some nasty permission issue I encountered with SSIS. At a new project, someone mentioned me that a scheduled job has been failing for quite some time now (actually since they created the job, yay for testing!). So I put my detective hat on (with my fake Poirot’stache) and started investigating. The SSIS catalog report All Executions gave me the following wonderfull error messages:

Just like last year, I’m a bit late with the obligatory “how was last year and what is this year supposed to bring” blog post. Anyway, here it is. Let’s start by wishing every one of you the very best for the new year. I hope 2015 may bring us many professional highlights, next to a fulfilling private life. 2014 was a great year professional wise: I had a long interesting project with interesting colleagues, I got to speak at two events and I did a webinar for the PASS BI virtual chapter.

Here is an overview of the articles I published in the last quarter of 2014. INTENSE SCHOOL MCSE Prep: Overview of T-SQL Windowing Functions Part 1 MCSE Prep: Overview of T-SQL Windowing Functions Part 2 The third and final part of this series will probably be published this month, so keep an eye on the site for more window functions awesomeness 🙂 MSSQLTIPS Format Durations in SQL Server Analysis Services Creating a box plot graph in SQL Server Reporting Services SQL Server Reporting Services Add Calculated Series to a Graph Add a linear trendline to a graph in SQL Server Reporting Services Yes, I had quite some SSRS inspiration the past months.