Editorial Tips

Solution Search:
SQL Server 2005 introduced a valuable new Transact-SQL language component – a common table expression (CTE) -- that can be a handy alternative... More...
Feb 13, 2008
What does goal setting have to do with SQL Server security? Everything! Like most things security-related, protecting your database is not a one... More...
Feb 6, 2008
VistaPrint, a company with site databases containing more than 2 terabytes of data, employed a third-party tool to log ship the data from its... More...
Feb 5, 2008
Where did the good old days of security go? I remember learning about the basic information security principles of least privilege, delegated... More...
Dec 20, 2007

The problem

SQL Server tables and indexes tend to become fragmented over time because of data modifications. In large I/O operations... More...

Nov 7, 2007
Statistics are a very important and much unappreciated part of Microsoft SQL Server. In basic terms, statistics are metadata about the data... More...
Oct 24, 2007
The problem:
You read many articles and best practice documents about SQL Server security. Life would be easy if you already had security... More...

The database system that I maintain makes extensive use of stored procedures. Most of the common tasks performed with the database are handled... More...

Jan 30, 2008
Determining accurate storage requirements in SQL Server is an ongoing process that you should repeat regularly throughout the life of the... More...
Jan 9, 2008
When setting up log shipping in SQL Server 2005, you have a lot of options to choose from in order to nail down optimal configuration between... More...
Apr 14, 2008
Get expert advice for scheduling backup jobs in SQL Server via SQL Server Agent using a crafted BACKUP DATABASE command or maintenance plan. If... More...
Mar 31, 2008
One way to greatly improve your SQL Server's performance is to properly optimize the tempdb database. To punch up its efficiency, try looking at... More...
Mar 26, 2008
Plenty of malicious outsiders would love to get into our databases. To block them, we simply put up a firewall and make sure no externally facing... More...
Mar 24, 2008
Sp_spaceused is a stored procedure that ships with SQL Server and is used to display the disk space taken by a SQL Server object. Very often, I find... More...
Apr 9, 2008
Always save CREATE TABLE statements, along with all other statements defining database schema in a secure location. Every time you make a... More...
Oct 17, 2007
SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) provides a powerful environment for extracting, transforming and loading data, and most of the time you... More...
Dec 18, 2007
Data types used for storing blob data

Blob data is a field that holds large amounts of data per record. This data can be either in a text format or a... More...

Sep 26, 2007
Why the plan?

The key to a successful upgrade project is proper planning. Without a proper plan, there's no way to guarantee the upgrade project... More...

Feb 25, 2008
The problem:

Monitoring long-running jobs in SQL Server 2000 is a complicated task. The problem is that the job execution history is written only... More...

Feb 27, 2008

Prior to SQL Server 2005, you could define only Data Manipulation Language (DML) triggers. Those triggers fired when you ran a DML statement such... More...

May 5, 2008
It was just a simple database. It hadn't been used in over a year. It was behind the firewall and it didn't really contain anything that anyone would... More...
Jun 4, 2008
Knowing the size of a SQL Server database is one of the many DBA responsibilities that you can accomplish easily with the stored procedure sp... More...
May 13, 2008
Database administrators take SQL Server storage for granted all too often. The storage area network (SAN) is something a lot of DBAs need to learn... More...
May 29, 2008

While the majority of articles describing new functionality in SQL Server 2005 focus on flashy features such as SQLCLR or the XML data type... More...

May 19, 2008
Server Clustering Whitepapers
Auto-Snapshot Manager / Microsoft Edition for Hyper-V by Dell, Inc.
integrated data protection for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V environments. Read now to learn more.

As organizations consolidate more virtual machines (VM) on fewer...
The Power and Cooling Benefits of Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 by Dell, Inc. and Intel
your organization, and learn how the Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 can help reduce these requirements.

Servers have to be powered up and then cooled down. Utility rates never go...
Microsoft SQL Server 2012: What to Expect by Global Knowledge
some of the new features of the upcoming SQL Server 2012 release, including  high availability and disaster recovery, that will provide your organization with mission...
Applying Factory Principles to Accelerate Enterprise Virtualization by Dell, Inc. and Intel
In order for Intel to create the infrastructure for their private enterprise cloud, Intel IT has set a goal of virtualizing up to 75 percent of their...