I've historically been a huge fan of Mladen Prajdic's SSMS Tools Pack. It's a full-featured tool kit which solves a lot of problems and I highly recommend it to anybody who uses SSMS. I'm not averse to spending money---after all, the other two products on my list are paid tools---but I wanted to see what…
SSMS Tools: Tabs Studio
Tabs Studio is technically not a SQL Server Management Studio tool---it's a Visual Studio extension which will also support SQL Server Management Studio. For this, I am grateful. Over the course of a few-day period, I'll collect dozens of Management Studio tabs. Here's a sample of how my screen looks right now, even after I…
Ubisoft and WWE — a tale of two companies in some serious shit
If you aren't following me on Facebook or Twitter, you've not heard me complain about Assassin's Creed Unity. Since I think that's the case for at least some of my audience, I'll spell out what's going on. As I am a massive fan of the AC series, I was initially disappointed to see that AC…
SSMS Tools: dbForge SQL Complete
One tool I can't give enough love for is DevArt's dbForge SQL Complete. This tool fits in a fairly crowded space, and I'll say that I tried Red Gate's SQL Prompt and ApexSQL's ApexSQLComplete products before settling on DevArt's version. All of these are solid products, but there's a big reason I chose SQL Complete: the breadth…
Giving Thanks To SSMS Tools
Over the next few days, I want to get in the spirit of Thanksgiving by pointing out a few tools upon which I depend. I have at least one SQL Server Management Studio window open throughout the course of my work day, and these tools make me a lot more productive by eliminating some of the…
The Last of Us
This isn't a video game review. The Last of Us is a PS3 game (which is being remastered for PS4) by Naughty Dog. It is, superficially, the same general combat system as Uncharted, so if you liked Uncharted's combat, you'll like The Last of Us. But you may not like the story. I'm having a…
BIDS Helper Non-Bug: If Statements
During BIML Part 6, I had a segment of BIML code which produces what looks like a somewhat silly output. What follows is a simplified version of the issue. Looking at this code, you can see that we generate two values: 1 and 2. If you create a BIML script and check for errors in…
The Hall Countdown
Sports on Earth (which has taken a serious quality hit of late but is still quite good) has a very nice article on the ticking clock some MLBers face with regards to the HOF, based purely off past voting histories. The article's surprisingly depressing on a couple of Hall cases. Jeff Bagwell is project to…
BIDSHelper Bug: NoMatch Issue With Visual Studio 2013
BIDS Helper is a fantastic tool, but it's not perfect. If you're using Visual Studio 2013, there is a bug in BIDS Helper that would prevent you from implementing lookups with NoMatch criteria like I used in BIML Part 6. Here's a quick-and-easy BIML package which fails: The error message that you get from this…
Bobby Bonilla is the greatest player in baseball history…
...at collecting free money for doing nothing. Hardball Times has a fun look at people who are owed money for doing nothing next season. Very pleased to see no Indians on there.
36 Chambers - The Legendary Journeys: Execution to the max! 