Robert Sheldon Converting String Data to XML and XML to String Data We all appreciate that, in general, XML documents or fragments are held in strings as text markup. In SQL Server,... 01 February 2012 18 min read
Brad McGehee How to Document and Configure SQL Server Instance Settings Occasionally, when you install identical databases on two different SQL Server instances, they will behave in surprisingly different ways. Why?... 30 January 2012 74 min read
Rob Garrison What’s the Point of Using VARCHAR(n) Anymore? The arrival of the (MAX) data types in SQL Server 2005 were one of the most popular feature for the... 30 January 2012 11 min read
Phil Factor Confessions of a DBA: My worst mistake Over the next few months, we'll be asking various well-known DBAs to describe their worst disaster caused by a mistake... 23 January 2012 6 min read
Jonathan Kehayias Great SQL Server Debates: Buffer Cache Hit Ratio One of the more popular counters used by DBAs to monitor the performance, the Buffer Cache Hit Ratio, is useless... 18 January 2012 15 min read
Robert Young Relational Databases and Solid State Memory: An Opportunity Squandered? The relational model was devised long before computer hardware was able to deliver an RDBMS that could deliver a fully... 17 January 2012 6 min read
Alex Kuznetsov Close Those Loopholes: Lessons learned from Unit Testing T-SQL Alex has done some pioneering work on the testing of stored procedures over four years, and has learned a great... 09 January 2012 23 min read
Sam Bendayan Constraints and the Test-Driven Database Bad data always seems to appear when, and where, one least expects it. Sam explains the great value of a... 14 December 2011 13 min read
Feodor Georgiev Administrating SQL Server Integration Services – Planning, Documenting and Troubleshooting SQL Server Integration Services is an essential component of SQL Server, and designed to perform a variety of routine and... 12 December 2011 15 min read
Jonathan Kehayias Great SQL Server Debates: Lock Pages in Memory There has been much debate over the need for the Lock Pages in Memory privilege, on 64-bit versions of SQL... 12 December 2011 19 min read
Grant Fritchey Backup Verification: Tips for Database Backup Testing A Backup system is merely part of a recovery system. If your backups can't be used to recover the database,... 06 December 2011 4 min read
Grant Fritchey Faster Restores: Best Practices to Increase Speed Backups are an everyday part of DBA life, whereas restores tend to happen on call at 3 a.m. In this... 02 December 2011 5 min read
Database Administration Grant Fritchey in Database Administration Grant Fritchey’s SQL Server Howlers We decided to ask various well-known SQL Server people to write about their favourite SQL Server Howlers. These are the... 30 November 2011 16 min read
Greg Larsen SQL Server Database Growth and Autogrowth Settings It's easy to create a database nowadays with point-'n-click, but if you've left your database's autogrowth settings at their default,... 23 November 2011 19 min read
Database Administration Grant Fritchey in Database Administration 7 Preventable Backup Errors The loss of a company's data is often enough to put the company out of business; and yet backup errors... 31 October 2011 16 min read
Grant Fritchey Auditing DDL Changes in SQL Server databases Even where Source Control isn't being used by developers, it is still possible to automate the process of tracking the... 12 October 2011 17 min read
Database Administration Brad McGehee in Database Administration Database Properties Health Check Within an instance of SQL Server, the database settings can have a direct effect on the database's behavior, performance and... 13 September 2011 35 min read
Database Administration Fabiano Amorim in Database Administration Statistics on Ascending Columns It comes as rather a shock to find out that one of the commonest circumstances in an OLTP database, an... 01 September 2011 10 min read
Grant Fritchey Preventing Problems in SQL Server It is never a good idea to let your users be the ones to tell you of database server outages.... 15 August 2011 9 min read
Database Administration Laerte Junior in Database Administration Using PowerShell and WMI Events Queries for Powerful Notifications With PowerShell in one hand, and WMI in the other, DBAs can do almost anything in their Window's environments, and... 25 July 2011 11 min read
