Grant Fritchey SQL Server Backup and Restore for the Accidental DBA Not everyone who is tasked with the job of ensuring that databases are backed up, and easily restorable, consider themselves... 24 May 2011 15 min read
Joe Celko TIME Gentlemen please! The SQL Server temporal datatypes If you are still using the old Sybase DateTime datatype, it is a good idea to move your code to... 12 May 2011 12 min read
Phil Factor PATINDEX Workbench The PATINDEX function of SQL Server packs powerful magic, but it is easy to get it wrong. Phil Factor returns... 12 May 2011 14 min read
David Berry Performance Implications of Parameterized Queries Why don't we emphasize the huge advantages of parameterized queries over ad-hoc queries in SQL Server? There is a severe... 28 April 2011 19 min read
Grant Fritchey It’s 3AM and I’m on call If you are part of a team that is required to ensure that an application stays running at all hours,... 27 April 2011 11 min read
Robert Sheldon SSIS Event Handlers Basics SSIS event handlers are the simplest means of turning an SSIS script into a reliable system that is auditable, reacts... 26 April 2011 11 min read
Fabiano Amorim ShowPlan Operator of the Week – Split, Sort, Collapse 'Split, Sort & Collapse' is, happily, not a description of the intrepid Fabiano after his epic series of articles about... 11 April 2011 19 min read
Grant Fritchey Performing DBCC Checks Using SQL Virtual Restore Ever restored a corrupted database from the backup, only to find that the backups are corrupted too - All the... 07 April 2011 8 min read
Feodor Georgiev Database Documentation – Lands of Trolls: Why and How? When database documentation is mentioned in an IT Department, everybody nods wisely, yet everyone does their best to avoid doing... 07 April 2011 12 min read
Joe Celko Check your Digits The most persistent struggle in data processing has been to ensure clean data. There are many ways that data can... 07 April 2011 11 min read
Joe Celko Improving Comparison Operators and Window Functions It is dangerous to assume that your data is sound. SQL already has intrinsic ways to cope with missing, or... 01 April 2011 12 min read
John O'Neill, SourceGear Life After Retirement: Replacing Visual SourceSafe Source control systems aren't exciting, and they don't come less exciting than Visual SourceSafe. Developers continue to use it but... 31 March 2011 12 min read
Phil Factor How to Import Data from HTML pages It turns out that there are plenty of ways to get data into SQL Server from websites, whether the data... 30 March 2011 21 min read
Robert Sheldon Using SQL Server Integration Services to Bulk Load Data The most flexible way to bulk-load data into SQL Server is to use SSIS. It can also be the fastest,... 29 March 2011 15 min read
Troy Hunt The unnecessary evil of the shared development database One of the greatest pain-points in developing a database-driven application happens when the application is in source control,but the database... 23 March 2011 16 min read
Grant Fritchey SQL Strategies for ‘Versioned’ Data If you keep your data according to its version number, but need to work only with a particular version, what... 17 March 2011 17 min read
Timothy Wiseman SQL Injection: Defense in Depth So much has been written about SQL Injection, yet such attacks continue to succeed, even against security consultants' websites. The... 17 March 2011 11 min read
Hugo Shebbeare The Polyglot of Databases: How Knowledge of MySQL and Oracle Can Give SQL Server DBAs an Advantage Although switching between different RDBMSs can be the cause of some culture shock for the Database Administrator, it can have... 14 March 2011 16 min read
Feodor Georgiev The default trace in SQL Server – the power of performance and security auditing Since the introduction of SQL Server 2005, there is a simple lightweight trace that is left running by default on... 14 March 2011 17 min read
Paul White Understanding and Using Parallelism in SQL Server SQL Server is able to make implicit use of parallelism to speed SQL queries. Quite how it does it, and... 03 March 2011 22 min read
