Timothy Wiseman SQL Scripts Manager and IronPython As well as running TSQL and PowerShell, the free SQL Scripts Manager tool can also run Python scripts. This allows... 04 May 2012 10 min read
Robert Sheldon Implementing Lookup Logic in SQL Server Integration Services With SSIS, you can perform a lookup on data in the course of a task, using referenced data from any... 26 April 2012 14 min read
Greg Larsen SQL Server Transaction Log Fragmentation: a Primer Generally, you will have no need to worry about the number of virtual log files in your transaction log. However,... 26 April 2012 17 min read
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
Phil Factor Working with CSV Files in SQL Server: ODBC, Linked Server, and T-SQL Parsing Read and write CSV files from SQL Server using three approaches: the ODBC Text Driver, a linked server, and a... 13 April 2012 20 min read
Robert Sheldon Implementing Foreach Looping Logic in SSIS With SSIS, it is possible to implement looping logic into SSIS's control flow in order to define a repeating workflow... 27 March 2012 13 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
Joe Celko Bin Packing Problems: The SQL The 'bin packing' problem isn't just a fascination for computer scientists, but comes up in a whole range of real-world... 22 March 2012 10 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
Robert Sheldon Working with Variables in SQL Server Integration Services There are a number of ways that you can incorporated variables into your SSIS Scripts. Robert Sheldon demonstrates how.… 01 March 2012 12 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
Feodor Georgiev Exploring SSIS Architecture and Execution History Through Scripting When you are using SSIS, there soon comes a time when you are confronted with having to do a tricky... 16 February 2012 12 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
Dave Green Using SQL Test Database Unit Testing with TeamCity Continuous Integration With database applications, the process of test and integration can be frustratingly slow because so much of it is based... 02 February 2012 22 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
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
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
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
Grant Fritchey SQL Cop Review Static code analysis is used a lot by application programmers, but there have been surprisingly few tools for SQL development... 19 January 2012 7 min read
