What the Microsoft MVP Award Means to Me in 2018

Kendra Little
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I recently received my seventh “Most Valuable Professional” award from Microsoft. Oddly, I don’t think I’ve ever written about what this award means to me until this point. In part, this is because when “renewals” come out, there are always folks I know who have not been renewed — and for many people that can be a painful time. It’s never easy to celebrate when others are hurting. I wanted to write this post not to brag, but to discuss why this award has come to mean more to me– and why I’m eager for you, friend reader, to compete with me for your own MVP Award. At first, I just wanted to be in the club When I first began giving talks on SQL Server, I learned about the Microsoft MVP program from other speakers. I had no idea what it was before then, even as a Microsoft employee…
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The Right to Be Erased is Coming to California, Along with Other Privacy Rights

Kendra Little
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In the last year, developers and DBAs have heard a lot about the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) law passed by the European Union. These regulations not only impact companies that are incorporated in Europe, but all companies processing the data of Europeans. These new ground rules include obtaining consent before adding people to mailing lists, allowing people to revoke that consent easily, and requiring processes for handling personal data to protect the data by default. The GDPR also allows individuals in the EU to request copies of information that a company holds about them, and grants “the right to erasure,” or the right to have their data removed. This is particularly an interesting issue when it comes to data stored in backups, and copies of data, which are frequently used for software development, test, and analysis. These rights are now coming to the United States If you didn’t pay…
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Free Webcast: DBA vs Memory Settings

Kendra Little
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Join me in two weeks for a really fun free webcast. Update: watch the recording of the webcast here! DBA vs Memory Settings Tues, April 24, 2018 – 8:30AM Pacific / 11:30AM Eastern Quest Free Webcast – watch the recording here External memory pressure: What is it and how does it affect SQL Server? In this session, I am teaming up with SQL Server expert Jason Hall from Quest to play around with various configurations of Max Server Memory, Min Server Memory and Lock Pages in Memory and watch SQL Server squirm – for science! You’ll come away with a fresh understanding of how to configure major memory settings for SQL Server. Watch this free session here. Check out more free upcoming sessions.
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Remembering Robert Davis, aka @SQLSoldier

Kendra Little
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I woke up early on Tuesday with a hundred things to do and plenty of energy to match my task list. By noon, I’d made a loaf of bread, helped a friend solve a tech mystery, and had various professional adventures. Then I opened Twitter and saw the news that Robert Davis passed away. I haven’t really gotten much done in the hours since, except think about Robert. And cry a bit. And laugh. It feels weird laughing, but I think Robert would understand. Robert was one of the smartest people I’ll ever meet Robert’s mind, and his memory, were amazing. He learned quickly and he had amazing recall of facts, he was so accurate and fast! Robert was someone who really knew it all, when it came to SQL Server – but he was the opposite of a know-it-all. He loved learning things, and he was always excited to…
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Adding a Downloadable Calendar Event File to WordPress without a Plugin

Kendra Little
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Let’s say you’ll be doing an event soon — say a Facebook Live event– and you want to create a calendar reminder for folks to download. Lots of us live and die by calendar invites, so this can be helpful to get people to attend. It seems like it’d be an easy enough thing to generate a file for this invitation and embed it on a WordPress page, but I managed to mess this up six ways to Sunday recently. Here’s what I goofed up, and how I got it working. Note: if you want to skip the long story, there’s a recap of the steps that work at the end of the post. Generating an invitation file – what not to do on a Mac I use a mac, so my first attempt was to generate the file using iCal, aka Calendar.app. I created the event, and then right…
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SQL Server 2026: BAGI Edition (#TSQL2SDAY 100!)

Kendra Little
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It’s T-SQL Tuesday’s 8 year birthday (or close enough), and Adam Machanic has challenged us with the question: what will the world be like when T-SQLTuesday turns 16? Not familiar with T-SQL Tuesday? It’s a monthly event where you’re invited to join in blogging on a given topic. Invitations are posted centrally here, and here’s how to set up emails if you’d like the invitation in your inbox. In 2026, SQL Server will still exist, but times will have changed Individual servers, virtual machines, instances, databases – many of us will still know those concepts well and fondly. But most new applications will be written for and deployed on BAGIs. The Big BAGI: Big Awesome Giant Infrastructure Big BAGIs will be giant compute clusters, run by a variety of providers. These compute clusters won’t have any tape storage, no spinning disks, not even any SSDs as we know them today.…
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