Have you ever wondered what the best option is for making your data available in your environment? Listener Chris Hendon asked us to talk about differences between Availability groups, mirroring, log shipping, and replication. Today on the SQL Trail Steve and I chat with Andy Mallon and Mariano Kovo about these topics. We cover each topic in detail and explain the positives and negatives of each one.  Join us, for another great episode.

The show notes for today's episode are available at http://sqldatapartners.com/2016/08/24/data-availability/

With all the changes in technology, how do you stay up to date with your technical learning?  This is a question we have been asking our guests the last several episodes and in this episode we, the hosts, attempt to answer this question and Carlos and Steve give some thoughts on how we stay up to date.  We discuss four ways to keep up.  If all else fails, you can follow this old adage.  "It's know WHAT you know, it's not WHO you know--it's WHAT you know about WHO you know." 

The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/learning.

Compañeros, in Episode 57 of the SQL Data Partners Podcast we take a page from the SQL Server Radio podcast where they list the 50 worst feature and discuss SQLFamily question 2 about what SQL Server features we think could improve. We talk about the redundancy of default maintenance plans, the pain of autogrowth and autoshrink, why NO LOCK hints shouldn't be used, what's so bad about Activity Monitor, and more.  It should be noted here, that we LOVE SQL Server, we just being a bit picky with some of the tools.  :)

What feature do you want to change? Do you disagree with our list?  Let us know on the show notes page or using the hastag #SQLPodcast

The show notes for today's episode are at http://sqldatapartners.com/worstfeatures

I found myself in Columbus Ohio at the SQLSaturday event and thought I'd do a live panel discussion about our Favorite SQL Server 2016 Features--what we are most excited about.   We also discuss the "Microsoft paradigm shift" and how the hybrid model is likely to stick around for a long time.  Oh, and Scott Klein from Channel 9 shows up and gives us his two cents.  You just never know what is going to come out of the wood work.

SQL Server reporting services hasn't changed in what seems like 10 years.  The rest of the reporting environment at Microsoft has seen some MEGA changes and it seems like we could use a few updates to the environment.  Our guest this episode is Jessica Moss, a data architect and Microsoft MVP.  She gets us up to speed on what we can expect in the new version and how this ties into the other changes Microsoft is making. 

The show notes for today's show can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/jessica and we'll see you on the SQL trail.