Gregory A. Larsen

Gregory A. Larsen is a DBA at Washington State Department of Health (DOH). Greg is responsible for maintaining SQL Server and other database management software. Greg works with customers and developers to design and implement database changes, and solve database/application related problems. Greg builds homegrown solutions to simplify and streamline common database management tasks, such as capacity management.

Greg has been working with computers since the late 1970's and has a Bachelors of Science Degree in Computer Science, with a minor area of study in Mathematics. Greg's background in DBA work goes back to the mid 1980's. Gregory has been a DBA for a number of different organizations within the State of Washington. This has given him a broad perspective on how organizations manage databases and applications. During Greg's DBA career, he has managed databases on Windows, UNIX, and IBM mainframes. Greg remembers the days when DBAs frequently had to recover from hard disk crashes, as the normal course of business. Greg is currently a PASS chapter leader.

Prior to becoming a DBA, Greg developed and maintained applications. Greg has written a number of articles for different web publishing sites, as well as SQL Server Magazine. Greg also maintains a website ( http://www.sqlserverexamples.com) that contains a number of SQL Server examples to common DBA and SQL developer issues. Greg currently holds a MCITP: Database Administrator and MCITP: Database Developer certificates, and is a SQL Server MVP.

Series Articles

Current Articles:

SQL Server Column Considerations and Column Placement - 2/26/10
The Dos and Don'ts of Database Indexing - 1/29/10
Getting Acquainted with SQL Server 2008's Resource Governor - 1/15/10
Database Indexing Development Lifecycle...Say What? - 12/31/09
Final Keynotes of Pass Summit 2009 - 11/6/09
PASSion Award and Tom Casey’s Keynote Address - Pass Summit 2009 - 11/5/09
Pass Summit 2009 – Volunteer Meetings, Welcome Reception and Quiz Bowl - 11/4/09
Bob Muglia & Ted Kummert Keynote Address: Pass Summit 2009 - 11/3/09
Building Code that Promotes Plan Re-usage - 8/14/09
Calling a Web Service from within SQL Server - 5/22/09
10 New SQL Server 2008 Features - 4/24/09
Using Check Constraints to Validate Data in SQL Server - 3/30/09
Finding the Worst Performing T-SQL Statements on an Instance - 2/20/09
Creating Your Own Custom Data Collections - 1/28/09
Kilimanjaro, Gemini and Madison - Get the lowdown - 12/22/08
A SQL Monitor by Red-Gate Software - 11/25/08
Reports for SQL Server 2008 System Data Collections - 10/27/08
SQL Server 2008 Data Collections and the Management Data Warehouse - 9/29/08
What Kind of DBA Are You? - 8/26/08
SQL Server 2008 MERGE Statement - 7/24/08
SQL Server 2008 Date Functions, Part 2 - 6/26/08
New Date Data Types with SQL Server 2008 - 5/27/08
Connection Strategy for Multiple Database Environments - 4/22/08
Exam 70-443 Practice Test from uCertify.com - 3/31/08
SQL Server DBA Dashboard - 2/29/08
Building Custom Reporting Services Reports for SQL Server Management Studio - 1/30/08
Disk Space Usage and SQL Server Performance - 12/26/07
SQL Server Security Model - 11/28/07
How to Build a Profile Script to Monitor SQL Server off Hours - 10/30/07
Preparing for the M70-444 Exam - 10/1/07
Setting Up Delegation for Linked Servers - 8/31/07
Setting up a Linked Server for a Remote SQL Server Instance - 7/31/07
Using Non-Standard Port for SQL Server - 7/20/07
Monitoring Stored Procedure Usage - 7/9/07
Monitoring Changes to your Database Schema - 6/28/07
How Useful Are Those Indexes - 5/31/07
Scripting the Installation of SQL Server 2005 - 4/26/07
Using and Managing Database Mail - 3/30/07
New Ranking Functions within SQL Server 2005 - 2/28/07
Dealing With Upper and Lower Case Data - 1/31/07
Calculating Days of the Week and Accounting Months 5-4-4 - 12/29/06
Creative Ways to Use the TOP Clause - 12/19/06
The Five W's of Database Restores - 11/30/06
Automatically Stopping and Restarting SQL Server - 11/21/06
Working with Comma Separated Data – Part 2 - 10/30/06
Dealing with Comma Delimited Strings - 9/29/06
SQL Server 2005 Large Value Data Types - 9/20/06
Copying Database Backups to an Alternative Location - 8/31/06
Monitoring SQL Servers Availability - 7/31/06
Apply Operator - 6/30/06
Dynamic Management Views and Functions - 5/31/06
Quest Capacity Manager Review - 4/28/06
SQL Server 2005 Upgrade Advisor - 3/31/06
Cycling the ERRORLOG file and Deleting Backup History Information - 2/28/06
Try/Catch Block in SQL Server 2005 - 2/28/06
SQL Server 2005 Import / Export Wizard - 1/30/06
Finding Database Object Dependencies - 12/30/05
Using SQL Server 2005 sqlcmd Utility - 11/30/05
Setting DTS Package Properties at Runtime - 10/31/05
Automatically Running a Process When SQL Server or SQL Agent Starts - 9/30/05
Point in Time Recovery - 8/31/05
Index Tuning Wizard - 7/29/05
Implementing the Equivalent of a FULL OUTER JOIN in Microsoft Access - 6/30/05
Transferring Data from One Table to Another - 5/31/05
Identifying Long Running SQL Server Agent Jobs - 4/27/05
Detecting The State of a SQL Server Agent Job - 3/31/05
SQL Server: Updating Integer Status Columns - 12/31/04
SQL Server Undocumented Stored Procedures sp_MSforeachtable and sp_MSforeachdb - 11/30/04
Submitting A Stored Procedure Asynchronously - 10/29/04
Gathering Space Usage Statistics - 9/30/04
Working With Columns That Contain Null Values - 8/31/04
How To Get Output Into SQL Server Table - 7/30/04
Using xp_cmdshell - 6/30/04
Storing Multiple Statuses Using an Integer Column - 5/31/04
SQL MAIL and SQL Agent Mail using POP3 and SMTP - 4/30/04
Web Data Administration Tool from Microsoft - 3/31/04
Microsoft SQL Server Survival Guide - 2/18/04
Benchmarking Performance of a Query - Part 2 CPU and I/O - 2/4/04
Benchmarking Performance of a Query - Part 1 Elapsed Time - 1/21/04
SQL Server: Calculating Running Totals, Subtotals and Grand Total Without a Cursor - 12/3/03
Using xp_fixeddrives to Monitor Free Space - 10/1/03
Examples of how to Calculate Different SQL Server Dates - 9/15/03
Using SQL Server's CHARINDEX and PATINDEX - 9/3/03
Migrating a Maintenance Plan from One SQL Server to Another - 8/20/03
Sequential Numbering/Counting of Records with SQL Server - 8/6/03
Dealing with MS SQL Tables that contain Duplicate Rows - 7/16/03
Migrating Logins from One SQL Server to Another - 7/2/03
Padding, Rounding, Truncating and Removing Trailing Zeroes - 6/18/03
Streamlining the Database Server Recovery Process on SQL Server - 4/3/03
Nightly Failed Jobs Report - 3/21/03
Beware of Mixing Collations: Part 2- Converting Collations - 3/5/03
Beware of Mixing Collation with SQL Server 2000 - Part 1 - 2/19/03
Removing Orphan Users from All databases on SQL Server - 2/04/2003
Beware of the System Generated Constraint Name - 1/16/2003
Using and Building Query Analyzer Templates - 12/23/2002