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
Database Administration Glenn Berry in Database Administration Configuring the Storage Subsystem The storage subsystem for a SQL Server can prove to be a bottleneck if the best choices of hardware aren't... 20 July 2011 42 min read
Joe Celko Arrays in SQL that Avoid Repeated Groups It is certainly possible to fake an Array in SQL, but there are only a few occasions when it would... 05 July 2011 11 min read
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
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
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
Grant Fritchey SQL Server Versioned Data Queries: MAX vs TOP vs ROW_NUMBER Performance Compare SQL Server query strategies for retrieving the latest version from a version history table: MAX, TOP (1), and ROW_NUMBER.... 17 March 2011 18 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
Brad McGehee Correlating SQL Server Profiler with Performance Monitor Both Performance Monitor and SQL Server Profiler provide valuable information about your server. However, if you combine the data from... 16 February 2011 24 min read
Timothy Ford Investigating Transactions Using Dynamic Management Objects There can be a great difference in the performance of a particular routine in a test database, and in a... 30 September 2010 39 min read
Rod Colledge Policy-based Management and Central Management Servers Whilst it may be more exciting as a DBA to rush around fixing broken databases, it is far better to... 30 September 2010 23 min read
Brad McGehee Rebuilding Indexes using the SSMS Database Maintenance Wizard Index fragmentation can cause problems with query performance. Indexes therefore need to be occasionally rebuilt. the Rebuild Index task of... 18 August 2010 24 min read
Brad McGehee Brad’s Sure Guide to SQL Virtual Restore In the first of a series of in-depth software reviews, Brad investigates a newcomer, SQL Virtual Restore. What does it... 05 August 2010 34 min read
Greg Larsen Creative Solutions by Using a Number Table One irritating thing for the occasional SQL Server Developer is that the experts assume that you are familiar with the... 03 August 2010 16 min read
Brad McGehee Ola Hallengren’s SQL Server Maintenance Solution: Setup and Configuration Guide Complete guide to Ola Hallengren's free SQL Server Maintenance Solution: how to download, configure, and deploy DatabaseBackup, DatabaseIntegrityCheck, and IndexOptimize... 20 July 2010 36 min read
