SQL Saturday 149 Announcement

I found out that my submission for SQL Saturday 149 was accepted and I will again be presenting at the MN SQL Saturday this year. If you haven't signed up yet and you will be in the Twin Cities MN area on Saturday September 29th, 2012, you are missing out on one of the best SQL Server conferences around. This year, the event will be held at the University of Minnesota - Keller Hall, 200 Union Street SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455. Admittance to this event is free, but they do charge a lunch fee of 10.00 so that they can provide a lunch - not pizza! Please register soon as seating is limited, and let friends and colleages know about the event. You can find out more about this (and register!!) at the event homepage: http://www.sqlsaturday.com/149/eventhome.aspx

Sync Config Settings between Servers

I'm setting up a new Staging Environment and am trying to find ways we can sync Staging with our production environment. My current task is to Sync the configurations and settings. Here is the script I came up with for the Config Settings. Hope it's of use.

/***************************************************
 ** Title:  Sync Config Settings between Servers  **
 ** Author: Eric Zierdt                           **
 ** Date:   03/10/2011                            **
 ***************************************************/

/**************************************
 ** STEP 1: Turn on Advanced Options **
 **************************************/
sp_configure 'show advanced options', 1
GO
RECONFIGURE
GO


/*******************************************
 ** STEP 2: Populate the values from Prod **
 *******************************************/
-- SELECT * INTO #TMP_PROD_Configs FROM ProductionServer.msdb.sys.configurations C


/*****************************************
 ** STEP 3: Run Cursor and copy results **
 *****************************************/
DECLARE @SQL VARCHAR(MAX)
  ,@name VARCHAR(300)
  ,@value SQL_VARIANT

DECLARE SYNC_CURSOR CURSOR FOR
 SELECT TOC.name, TOC.value
 FROM sys.configurations C
 LEFT JOIN #TMP_PROD_Configs TOC ON C.configuration_id = TOC.configuration_id
 WHERE C.value <> TOC.VALUE
   AND C.configuration_id NOT IN (1543,1544)

OPEN SYNC_CURSOR
FETCH NEXT FROM SYNC_CURSOR 
INTO @name, @value
WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0
BEGIN

 SET @SQL = '
sp_configure ''' + @Name + ''', ' + CAST(@Value AS VARCHAR(25)) + '
GO
RECONFIGURE
GO
'
PRINT @SQL

 FETCH NEXT FROM SYNC_CURSOR 
 INTO @name, @value
END
CLOSE SYNC_CURSOR 
DEALLOCATE SYNC_CURSOR


/*************************************************
 ** STEP 4: Paste results below, review and run **
 *************************************************/





/**********************************************
 ** STEP 5: Be good and drop your temp table **
 **********************************************/
DROP TABLE #TMP_PROD_Configs


/***************************************
 ** STEP 6: Turn off Advanced Options **
 ***************************************/
sp_configure 'show advanced options', 0
GO
RECONFIGURE
GO


/***************************************
 ** Query to compare values if needed **
 ***************************************/
SELECT C.configuration_id, C.name, C.value,C.value_in_use, C.description
  , TOC.configuration_id, TOC.name, TOC.value,TOC.value_in_use, TOC.description
FROM sys.configurations C
LEFT JOIN #TMP_PROD_Configs TOC ON C.configuration_id = TOC.configuration_id
WHERE C.value <> TOC.VALUE
  AND C.configuration_id NOT IN (1543,1544)

Titles

I'm sure we've all seen them before, the silly title that some people get that sound so ridiculous, like at my last company the front desk person was the Director of First Impressions. I recently saw that one of our business people was on a YouTube video showing off our new product and her title was "Brand Ambassador". For some reason this struck me as very silly, so now we have brand managers and brand ambassadors...why do people find it so necessary to find these odd title for themselves. So I've come up with a list of possible titles for myself, I'll see if I can get my manager to allow me to use one of them. I've come up with a good list I think, but feel free to post a comment with some other good ones a DBA or BI Developer might consider.

Director of Fluff
Director of Shock and Awe
"Behind the Scenes Magic" Technician
Data Sorcerer
Data Mage
Data Defender
High Priest of the Data arts
His Royal Majesty
Knight of the Data Table
BI Crew Member
Developer of the BI Arts
The Keymaster
Data Doctor
Report Guru
Cube Guardian
Data Ambassador
Keeper of all things BI
Data Librarian
The Undersecretary of Data
The Sultan of SQL
The Duke of Data