The SQL UPDATE Statement

Welcome to the second week of SSIS this semester at SQL University. Today we’re going to talk about the relationship between children and parents. Ever had communication issues with your kids when you ask them to complete a chore? When they’re done, wouldn’t it be nice if they always came back and let you know they took what you said, applied it, and completed the job? What does that have to do with SSIS? Read on and find out!
Continue reading ‘SQL University: Parents Just Don’t Understand’ »

This week SQL University is on Spring Break but we’ve lined up some activities to help keep students busy (you know what they say about idle hands and whatnot!). In continuation of Women’s History Month, and properly coming off of the heels of the 24 Hours of PASS event, we’re proud to have our next talks in our Lecture Series this Friday at 1pm EST featuring the ladies of WIT Week here at SQL University.

Our Live Lecture will be happening over at SQLLunch, and as always it’s free, so make sure you go register for the event. If you enjoyed reading all of the fantastic posts from WIT week you’ll love this event. The session is going to be a round table discussion about what WIT means to them as well as discussing some of the issues they’ve faced and would like to address in the field. Audience participation is encouraged via Q&A in LiveMeeting so come join the panel. See you at the SQLLunch!

The new SQL University Logo

Well the new year is here and SQL University is back and better than ever! I just wanted to take a minute to bring everyone up to speed on what’s going on with SQLU.

First off the last semester we had (Spring 2010) started rather late, which pushed the rest of the schedule quite a bit. One of the unique facets of SQL University is having our coach Tom LaRock (Blog | Twitter) posting on EVERY topic, EVERY week which is quite the impressive feat! That being said, since the last semester ran a few weeks late it not only made a lot of work for him so I wanted to give him ample time off as that is a TON of writing he’s doing, which I think we can all agree, is pure awesomesauce. Also Tom has undergone a job transition, as well as I have, so it’s been a little hectic on that front as well. Due to the schedule shifts, job changes, moves and generally hectic life we decided to skip the Fall semester for 2010, hence you’ll find it missing from the overall SQLU main page.

Another reason we went quiet for awhile was we were busy putting together another major project: SQL University – The Book! No, sorry, no movie deals in the works but I think you guys will like this even better. What we’re doing is compiling all of this awesome material our professors have put together for you guys into an organized e-book companion! My hope is that we can it formatted properly for distribution via Amazon’s Kindle store but if that doesn’t work out we’ll probably just PDF it and let you guys go to town! As with the rest of this wonderful project, this is absolutely free to everyone and will be released as SQL University: Volume I, Freshman Year which includes the first two semester’s worth of blog content! This is taking a lot of time to put together so bear with us as we get that worked on.

Another big change you may have noticed, and one of the most exciting parts about this new year, is our re-branding! Our new logo comes courtesy of the wonderful folks at Revealed Design Inc. (Facebook| Twitter) and a big thanks to Aaron Nelson (Blog | Twitter) for hooking me up with them. This is a much cleaner design and look than my atrocious attempt at designing a blogger badge from before. When you visit each professor’s sites this time around you should see the new badges displayed.

Finally the other huge addition this year is our partnership with SQLLunch.com to bring you the live lecture series. We had our first one featuring Josef Richberg during SSIS week. We’ll be bringing you more this semester with some big names so stay tuned! The best way to keep up to date on all the latest news and additions to SQL University is to join our newsletter.

One More Thing…

If you’re enjoying SQL University and learning from all of these great folks in the SQL community you’ll get a chance to experience all of this in person! This Spring at SQLRally we’ll be hosting a Lightning Talk session featuring the professors of SQLU as well as some other special surprise guests. SQLRally runs from May 11-13 in Orlando, Florida and only costs $299  and $199 for pre-conference sessions (optional). Hope to see you there!

The new SQL University Logo

Welcome back students! We’re very excited to start up a new semester and SQLU is back and better than ever! This semester we’re lucky to have 7 MVP’s, 7 Women in Tech (most ever!) and a Microsoft Certified Master (MCM) in SQL Server presenting topics. In addition to our regular lessons we have the SQL Rockstar himself, Tom LaRock (Blog | Twitter), hosting weekly DBA Coaching lessons on his blog as well. Our staff is also hard at work putting together an e-book compilation of the first two semesters-worth of content. We’re calling this compilation SQL University Vol 1: Freshman Year. As soon as we finish putting it together we’ll announce it via the mailing list along with communications on Twitter (Follow us @sqluniversity). What mailing list you ask? Well if you want to make sure you get all the latest news and updates for SQLU please sign up for our mailing list here.

Continue reading ‘SQL University: Spring 2011’ »

In the first part of this week’s documentation series we covered documentation in the traditional sense. In today’s lesson we’re going to talk about a new avenue which many are using as a sort of documentation repository and that is the personal tech blog.

Now I could use this lesson as an entire post on how to get started blogging but I won’t. Instead I will re-direct you to professor Brent Ozar’s series on How to Start a Blog. Consider that your homework assignment for this class. So if I’m not going to talk about starting a blog then what are we going to discuss? How about the significance of blogging or writing for your own personal development and growth? I’m very fortunate in that I have managed to have Tom LaRock (Blog | Twitter) as part of the faculty and this semester he is playing the role of DBA Coach and he touches on some of these points in this week’s lesson as well.

Continue reading ‘Creative Writing Pt II: Blogging’ »