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Posted: July 22nd, 2008, 12:00am CST
Expert SQL Server trainer Andy Warren brings us a new article on a lesser used feature in SQL server 2005: the ability to disable an index.
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Posted: July 22nd, 2008, 12:00am CST
Learn how to monitor database-level actions and write audit results to files.
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Posted: July 22nd, 2008, 12:00am CST
With ranking functions in SQL Server 2005, you can rank rows in result sets. This tip defines rank functions and gives examples of how to use the four available functions.
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Posted: July 21st, 2008, 12:00am CST
While working on a project recently I was asked to develop a mechanism that would provide the dates for state and federal holidays in a given year. Since this project deals with all states and territories of the United States, the list had to be comprehensive and the client asked that this list be in the form of a SQL query calculated on-the-fly, rather than a static list.
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Posted: July 21st, 2008, 12:00am CST
It is irritating, sometimes alarming, for the user to be confronted by the 'deadlock message' when a deadlock happens. It can be a tiresome business to prevent them from occurring in applications. Fortunately, the profiler can be used to help DBAs identify how deadlocking problems happen, and indicate the best way of minimising the likelihood of their reappearance.
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Posted: July 21st, 2008, 12:00am CST
To create your own spelling suggestion feature, you need a look-up with correct spellings and misspellings. I walk you through it.
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Posted: July 16th, 2008, 12:00am CST
This long running, and very popular, XML series continues with a look at building an ATOM feed with SQL Server.
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Posted: July 16th, 2008, 12:00am CST
Histograms help people analyze large amounts of data, whether you display them as tables or as charts. This article shows you how to do both.
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Posted: July 16th, 2008, 12:00am CST
One thing you may need to do is dynamically return a set amount of rows based on user input. This could be for a search function, reports, dropdown lists or whatever. Instead of hard coding a set value you would like to pass in a variable that will then determine the number of rows to return. How can this be done with T-SQL?
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Posted: July 15th, 2008, 12:00am CST
We have a new author at SQLServerCentral.com, Muthusamy Anantha Kumar AKA The MAK, who starts a new series on the basics that a DBA needs to know. This installment walks over basic backup and restore.
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Posted: July 15th, 2008, 12:00am CST
When databases suddenly stop working, it can be for a number of different reasons. Human error plays a large part, of course, and the DBA needs to know what these various humans are up to. DDL triggers can help alert the DBA to unauthorized tampering with a production system, of course, but DDL triggers can't tell you everything. At some point, you will need to implement your own checks. Randy certainly reached that point!
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Posted: July 15th, 2008, 12:00am CST
Table locking hints provide developers much tighter control of their transactions. Look at the benefits and disadvantages of using the NOLOCK and READPAST table hints in SQL Server
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Posted: July 14th, 2008, 12:00am CST
How a transaction log was deleted and then recreated.
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Posted: July 14th, 2008, 12:00am CST
I need to write a function to determine if particular year is a leap year (i.e. February contains 29 days rather than 28 days). I know that there are various rules for calculating leap years. Is there an easy way to figure this out? Can you provide an example or two to validate various years?
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Posted: July 14th, 2008, 12:00am CST
Michael David discusses how XQuery was designed from the ground up to process hierarchical XML data, but it is still missing capabilities that a hierarchical query processor product should have and did have originally.
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Posted: July 10th, 2008, 12:00am CST
How many times have you wanted to know which child or grandchild records exists for a parent record? SSMS doesn't make this information easy to find beyond one level. New author Narasimhan Jayachandran brings us an article and a recursive solution.
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Posted: July 10th, 2008, 12:00am CST
SQL Server 2008 is coming in August, with the same pricing as SQL Server 2005.
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Posted: July 10th, 2008, 12:00am CST
If you use the new data types in SQL Server 2008, and your front-end application uses .NET 2, you may hit difficulties. András explains why and how...
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Posted: July 10th, 2008, 12:00am CST
Part 2 in this upgrade series lists the steps to point application traffic at a transition server while the primary cluster is rebuilt to Windows Server 2003 and SQL Server 2005.
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Posted: July 9th, 2008, 12:00am CST
Use the DTUTIL Command Prompt Utility to Copy / Install / Delete the SSIS Package deployed in MSDB Database to file system
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Posted: July 9th, 2008, 12:00am CST
Enhanced variable declaration, one of the many enhancements that Microsoft added to SQL Server 2008 allows you to declare and initialize a value at the same time. This article shows you how to do it.
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Posted: July 9th, 2008, 12:00am CST
As XML has become a popular means to store data for ease of interoperability, how do we use LINQ to query XML data?
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Posted: July 8th, 2008, 12:00am CST
This objective of the article is to give readers in depth understanding of INNER JOIN with different joining conditions.
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Posted: July 8th, 2008, 12:00am CST
In this article, republished from Brad McGehee's book 'How to Become an Exceptional DBA', Brad explains why there are several advantages for DBAs in continuing to take exams throughout their careers.
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Posted: July 8th, 2008, 12:00am CST
So, how do you prepare for a master rebuild and what do you do afterwards? Hopefully this checklist will give you an idea.
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Posted: July 7th, 2008, 12:00am CST
Longtime author Leo Peysakhovich brings us a new article on error handling when you have procedures nested inside each other.
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Posted: July 7th, 2008, 12:00am CST
In the previous installment of our series, we presented a variety of reasons that might influence your decision to upgrade a full-fledged member of the SQL Server 2005 family. This article discusses the actual implementation of this process, pointing out additional factors that might affect its complexity.
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Posted: July 7th, 2008, 12:00am CST
Storage area networks (SANs) improve SQL Server performance. Set up SANs on SQL Server with these best practices on migrating to, and configuring SANs.
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Posted: July 4th, 2008, 12:00am CST
SQL Server 2005 will truly introduce a new paradigm in how developers and DBAs work with SQL Server. One area in which dramatic changes have taken place is DTS, which is now renamed to SQL Server Integration Services or SSIS. Expert author Jamie Thomson brings us a look at how the fundamentals of workflow change from DTS to SSIS.
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Posted: July 4th, 2008, 12:00am CST
This article provides a step by step guide on how to export data to Microsoft Office Excel 2007
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Posted: July 4th, 2008, 12:00am CST
Using the new SQLCLR feature, managed code can use ADO.NET when running inside SQL Server 2005. Learn about SQLCLR via basic scenarios of in-process data access, SQLCLR constructs, and their interactions.
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Posted: July 3rd, 2008, 12:00am CST
Using the TOP clause in a procedure to delete records in batch.
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Posted: July 3rd, 2008, 12:00am CST
Many times people come across the Coalesce function and think that it is just a more powerful form of ISNULL. In actuality, I have found it to be one of the most useful functions with the least documentation. In this tip, I will show you the basic use of Coalesce and also some features you probably never new existed.
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Posted: July 3rd, 2008, 12:00am CST
Alex Kozak returns with another Date puzzle. A question from a Simple-Talk reader gives Alex the inspiration to see if is possible to list unused date ranges in one Select statement.
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Posted: July 3rd, 2008, 12:00am CST
We're sponsoring over 5 hours over 5 days of training on SSIS and Business Intelligence with Brian Knight, SQL Server MVP and founder of Pragmatic Works.
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Posted: July 3rd, 2008, 12:00am CST
Please join us in congratulating one of our longtime community members on MVP status.
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Posted: July 2nd, 2008, 12:00am CST
Two longtime members of the SQLServerCentral.com community received the well-deserved MVP status this week. Congratulate Jeff Moden and Michael Coles.
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Posted: July 2nd, 2008, 12:00am CST
The transaction log is a fairly complex construct in SQL Server and present in every database installation. New author James Rea brings us a great introduction to how the log works and how to maintain it.
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Posted: July 2nd, 2008, 12:00am CST
The problem arises when the hierarchy level increases as SQL Server is limited to 32 levels of recursion. We need a better way to implement recursive queries in SQL Server 2005. How do we do it?
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Posted: July 2nd, 2008, 12:00am CST
This article is Part 2 in the series which explores the options available in SQL Server 2005 for Slowly Changing Dimensions
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Posted: June 30th, 2008, 12:00am CST
We occasionally come up with a requirement that would be a good fit for a CLR function or stored procedure. For instance we would like to call a stored procedure to get the list of files in a particular folder. How can we return the list of files as a standard result set (i.e. rows and columns) using the CLR?
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Posted: June 30th, 2008, 12:00am CST
When you find out how easy it is for insiders to hack SQL Server databases with a few free security tools and a little luck, you'll re-examine your database security practices.
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Posted: June 30th, 2008, 12:00am CST
T-SQL calculations can get tricky at times, and since you often work with multiple rows, it's good to be exact in your data manipulation. New author Lynn Pettis brings us an article about calculating ages.
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Posted: June 27th, 2008, 12:00am CST
SQL Server high availability. Log shipping or replication, clustering or some other solution. It's a challenge and as companies grow more dependent on their databases, it's one that more and more DBAs face everyday. Paul Ibison has taken a look at how log shipping and replication can be compared in the quest for high availability.
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Posted: June 27th, 2008, 12:00am CST
SQL Server expert Denny Cherry explains how SQL Server determines how much memory is used for procedure and buffer cache and how you can allocate available memory.
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Posted: June 27th, 2008, 12:00am CST
See an example of using the Many-to-Many dimension in SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services to analyze sales data, and get ideas for other uses such as treating medical conditions, software testing, and more.
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Posted: June 25th, 2008, 12:00am CST
Create a computed column in SQL Server using XML data and optimize SQL queries. Learn how to create a function for XQuery and use it within the computed column formula.
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Posted: June 25th, 2008, 12:00am CST
Learn how to build a B-tree similar to those used by databases to implement indexes.
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Posted: June 25th, 2008, 12:00am CST
Generate formatted reports specifically for executives using PDA devices.
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Posted: June 24th, 2008, 12:00am CST
The CLR has not been well-received and most people use it for Regular Expressions and string functions. Here is an example that goes beyond trivial uses.
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Posted: June 24th, 2008, 12:00am CST
Have you seen disasters in your environment? I would bet you have at some point. Let's see if our top 13 disasters matches your experiences.
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Posted: June 24th, 2008, 12:00am CST
Parameterization of MDX functions is one of those things that cannot be delivered solely via graphical MDX Editor 鈥 but then, you really didn鈥檛 think that you could avoid actually touching MDX at all, did you? BI Architect Bill Pearson demonstrates a way to parameterize the highly useful LastPeriods() function.
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Posted: June 23rd, 2008, 12:00am CST
This article from new author Peter Kierstead shows us how to implement your own "fuzzy" dedup/merge logic without resorting to RBAR in T-SQL.
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Posted: June 23rd, 2008, 12:00am CST
Get correct answers to your SQL forum questions faster by making it easier to load your sample data and read your code.
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Posted: June 23rd, 2008, 12:00am CST
This article describes how the Transparent Data Encryption feature in SQL Server 2008 can be used to secure your databases
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Posted: June 23rd, 2008, 12:00am CST
This tutorial walks you through the process of adding SQL statements to your SSIS packages and bundling them into logical units of work if necessary.
