Can You Hear It Now?

Here is a quick blog to show you something I discovered that I didn’t know existed. I was on a Skype call and noted that the presentation I had been watching was no longer audible. I tried messing with my volume, I made sure my sounds weren’t muted and played around with my speakers and still nothing. I could hear the skype call without issues, but I wanted to multitask and continue to listen to the presentation. Finally, a light bulb went off and I thought maybe windows was “doing me a favor” and turning off all noises why I… Continue Reading

Maintaining Balance

Last week, I got the chance to give my I’m It Survival Tips for the Lone DBA  in a webcast for the first time thanks to the PASS Women in Technology Virtual Chapter. This is by far my favorite session to give because it’s real life and can pertain to all us. Whether you are a Lone DBA or part of a team, we all encounter the struggles when handling a heavy work load. I always love the interactions I get from this session. It allows us to share our stories and learn from each other. As a Lone DBA you are on call… Continue Reading

How to get started with Always Encrypted for Beginners Part 3: One Two Punch

A few weeks ago, I wrote Part 1 and 2 of this series, which was a beginner’s guide to Always Encrypted. In part 3, I am going to go over what road blocks I ran into when trying to implement this solution for a client. The goal of the project was to prevent the DBA from being able to view salary information, while still allowing the application to function without issue. We were able to encrypt the data easily, but the entire process was not without issues. We had to remove default constraint values to get it to implemented. Always… Continue Reading

It’s All in the Name, Index Naming Conventions

Awhile back, if you are on Twitter, you can probably recall my ranting about the 949 indexes I was reviewing. The process was to determine duplicate indexes and consolidate them or discard the unneeded ones. My ranting was not about the duplicates per se it was about the index names. It only takes a second to name an object with some name that tells what the thing is. Below I will show you some examples and give you an easy script that will help you generate your index names. Taking a little time to name things appropriately can go a… Continue Reading