Speakers Second Rule

After writing a post for Un-SQL Friday on the first rule of speaking I decided that it would make quite a good series of posts, so here’s my second rule of speaking:

Read the rest over at my new sirsql.net blog

Un-SQL Friday #004–Speakers First Rule

I may be a day late and a dollar short for Un-SQL Friday #004: Speaker Lessons Learned but still felt I had something to share.

One of my favorite book series is The Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind. The first of the 11 book series is called Wizards First Rule. It’s one of those oft rehashed tales of someone ordinary who turns out to be anything but. One of the things passed along was the first of a series of rules about magic. It made me think of speaking and the rules around that.

There are numerous rules (sure, you could call them guidelines or pieces of advice but we’re playing semantics here so go with it).

...read the rest over at sirsql.net

Central Auditing Of SQL Permissions Scripts

Yesterday I gave a presentation for the PASS PowerShell Virtual Chapter on central auditing of SQL permissions with PowerShell and TSQL. For those that attended feel free to download the scripts I used in my presentation. For those that didn’t…well you can still download them but this picture may not apply to you…

Image from whosawesome.com

Presenting For The PASS PowerShell Virtual Chapter

A quick note, on Wednesday at 1PM EST I'll be giving an online presentation on one of the two topics I submitted for the PASS Summit this year.

 The presentation will be heavy on the demo side of things and I'll cover the basics of querying SQL Server using PowerShell, running scripts against multiple machines quickly and easily as well as bulk loading data into SQL.

Please check out http://www.powershell.sqlpass.org/ for a link to the livemeeting.

Central auditing of SQL permissions with PowerShell & TSQL

Description: As a DBA it can be a challenge to know who has permissions to what SQL instances and what objects. The more instances you have the more complex that task. In this presentation I'll share a method using PowerShell and TSQL that can be used to capture permissions from all of your SQL instances and load them into a centralized location. We'll even take it a step further by auditing those permissions so that we can quickly and easily identify any that might have changed.

Rock The PASS Summit Vote

The PASS Summit 2011 is fast approaching. It’s being held in October this year and the call for speaker sessions has already closed. In a great turn of events PASS is asking you to take a part in helping to decide on the sessions to be presented. Up until May 20th you can vote on the sessions that you want to see.

I’ve already voted for multiple sessions over at the Session Preferencing page, please ensure that you do so as well. In doing so I hope that you consider voting for two sessions I submitted.

PowerShell: Are you checking out my profile? [100 level]

Session Category: Regular Session (75 minutes)
Session Track: Enterprise Database Administration and Deployment
PowerShell is a very powerful management tool and you can spend hours writing magical scripts to provide automation for frequently run tasks. Often forgotten is the PowerShell profile, a place you can add your own functions which can provide you lightning fast access to information.
In this session we'll talk about the power a profile puts at your fingertips. I will also demo (and share) several PowerShell functions that I use frequently for common tasks like checking database backups and disk space.
I'll show you my PowerShell profile if you show me yours.

I’ve given this presentation at a couple of SQLSaturday events and it’s proven very popular both times. I have a couple of new items in my profile which extends this topic further.

Centralized auditing of permissions with SQL Server and PowerShell [100 level]

Session Category: Regular Session (75 minutes)
Session Track: Enterprise Database Administration and Deployment
As a DBA it can be a challenge to know who has permissions to what SQL instances and what objects. The more instances you have the more complex that task. In this presentation I'll share a method using PowerShell and TSQL that can be used to capture permissions from all of your SQL instances and load them into a centralized location. We'll even take it a step further by auditing those permissions so that we can quickly and easily identify any that might have changed.

I will actually be presenting a shortened version of this on May 18th at 1pm EST for the PASS PowerShell Virtual Chapter. I hope you can attend that and get an idea of how the longer session could help you in auditing your SQL servers.