Hello and welcome to the third T-SQL Tuesday of 2013!

Over three years ago, Adam Machanic (Twitter) dreamed up the idea of T-SQL Tuesday:

Each month a blog will host the party, and about a week before the second Tuesday of the month a theme will be posted. Any blogger that wishes to participate is invited to write a post on the chosen topic. The event is called “T-SQL Tuesday”, but any post that is related to both SQL Server and the theme is fair game. So feel free to post about SSIS, SSRS, Java integration, or whatever other technologies you’re working with in conjunction with SQL Server. Even if your post includes no T-SQL we still want to see it.

A lot of you know that I’m a big fan of the basics, especially those basics that are grossly misunderstood or overlooked. So for this month’s T-SQL Tuesday, we’re talking about

Filegroups!

Hold on! I already hear some of you shouting, “Boooooring!!!”  You don’t have to write a file and filegroup primer, if you don’t want to. Get creative, get tangential! Some of my suggestions:

• Maybe you’d like to talk about partitioning indexes or tables across filegroups
• Or performance benefits (still!) of assigning tables to specific drives, via filegroups
• Or FILESTREAM, specifically (hey, that’s something that requires a specialized filegroup!)
• Or some horrible misuse of filegroups you’ve seen once  (we always love a SQL horror story)
• Or, if you have a mind, a file and filegroup backup/restore primer! (Why not? I’m not the only one who loves basics.)

How to Play

1. Window of opportunity: Your post must go live between 00:00:00 GMT on Tuesday the 12th of March and 00:00:00 GMT on Wednesday the 13th.
2. Show some love: Your blog post has to link back to the hosting blog, and the link must be anchored from the logo (the blue one shown here, not the stick figure “YAY!” one) which must also appear at the top of the post.
3. Check your work: If trackbacks won’t work properly then please leave a comment below so that your post is accounted for in the roundup.

Bonus points!

Bonus points are like brownie points – there’s no way to redeem them, but you feel good about it anyway. Earn some by using these brilliant suggestions:

1. Advertise! Include a reference to T-SQL Tuesday in the title of your post.
2. Tweet! Use the hash tag #TSQL2sDay to follow links and other relevant conversations.
3. Host! Consider hosting T-SQL Tuesday yourself. If you’re interested let Adam Machanic Know. If you’ve participated in two T-SQL Tuesdays previously and you keep up your blog (blog monthly for the last six months) then he’ll put you in the rotation.