I’ve been doing a lot of traveling lately speakng at SQL Saturday events. This last weekend it was my great pleasure to speak at Utah Code Camp, a local event. Not only was it nice to be local, but I really enjoyed the code camp. Unfortunately I didn’t get to stay all day as I had some other things going on as I have been gone a lot of Saturdays lately but I rally enjoyed the time I was there. I prepared a new session for the event, which I am also doing at SQL Saturday in Chicago this weekend (3/26). The session is titled “Hierarchical data in my database? Understanding SQL Server XML Features”. It is a quick overview of the various ways to get XML in and out of SQL Server, the T-SQL XQuery implementation, etc. A new session is always a bit worrisome as no matter how much you prepare and practice, you’re not real sure how the timing will go. But it seemed to go well, I had several positive comments from attendees afterwards, and I finished with about 5 minutes to spare. So not a bad first outing at all.

Removing Personally Identifiable Information in Development Environments
When testing code, it’s critical to have enough robust data. This often requires removing personally identifiable information. Find out how!