Buck Woody Big Data is Just a Fad The Term 'Big Data' is nothing more than a fad, and we'll soon be cringing with embarrassment at the thought... 13 April 2012 12 min read
Grant Fritchey How to Get Information About Your Backups When you need to restore but aren't 100% sure about the contents of your backup files, what do you do?... 23 March 2012 18 min read
Phil Factor Generating Data for Database Tests It is more and more essential for developers to work on development databases that have realistic data in both type... 08 March 2012 22 min read
Luciano Moreira No Significant Fragmentation? Look Closer… If you are relying on using 'best-practice' percentage-based thresholds when you are creating an index maintenance plan for a SQL... 28 February 2012 9 min read
Peter Larsson The Road to Professional Database Development: Set-Based Thinking Under the pseudonym of 'SwePeso', Peter Larsson is famous on SQL forums for the amazing performance he can get from... 21 February 2012 7 min read
Phil Factor PowerShell SMO: Automate SQL Server Script Generation Automate SQL Server database scripting with PowerShell and SMO. Covers Transfer objects, scripting options, and generating build scripts for tables,... 03 February 2012 24 min read
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
SQL Server Brad McGehee in SQL Server How to Document and Configure SQL Server Instance Settings Learn how to document and configure all ~70 SQL Server instance-level settings using T-SQL and PowerShell, with best-practice guidance for... 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
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
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
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 Autogrowth Settings: Best Practices Configure SQL Server database autogrowth settings for optimal performance. Learn fixed vs. percentage growth, monitoring auto-growth events, and sizing best... 23 November 2011 19 min read
