Rodney Landrum Consolidating SQL Server Error Logs from Multiple Instances Using SSIS SQL Server hides a lot of very useful information in its error log files. Unfortunately, the process of hunting through... 14 April 2010 15 min read
Alex Kuznetsov Basic Defensive Database Programming Techniques We can all recognise good-quality database code: It doesn't break with every change in the server's configuration, or on upgrade.... 31 March 2010 36 min read
Joe Celko Celko’s SQL Stumper: Eggs in one Basket Joe Celko reveals the winner of his Easter Stumper: the puzzle of designing an apparently simple database to deal with... 29 March 2010 13 min read
Buck Woody Mission Critical: Database Design There is nothing like a checklist to make sure you've completed all the tasks in designing a database, and there... 18 March 2010 3 min read
Phil Factor Exploring your database schema with SQL In the second part of Phil's series of articles on finding stuff (such as objects, scripts, entities, metadata) in SQL... 02 March 2010 23 min read
Alex Kuznetsov Defensive Database Programming Inside this book, you will find dozens of practical, defensive programming techniques that will improve the quality of your T-SQL... 22 February 2010 3 min read
Joe Celko Procedural, Semi-Procedural and Declarative Programming in SQL A lot of the time, the key to making SQL databases perform well is to take a break from the... 15 February 2010 10 min read
Buck Woody Mission Critical: SQL Server 2008 General Maintenance There is nothing that beats a simple checklist for ensuring that things don't get forgotten in the Database Maintenance process.... 15 February 2010 3 min read
Buck Woody Mission Critical: SQL Server 2008 Performance Tuning Task List In which Buck Woody imagines how the US military would have tackled DBA checklists for 'mission-critical' databases. And having imagined... 04 February 2010 3 min read
Phil Factor Finding Stuff in SQL Server Database DDL You'd have thought that nothing would be easier than using SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) for searching through the DDL... 04 February 2010 24 min read
Robert Sheldon Implementing User-Defined Hierarchies in SQL Server Analysis Services To be able to drill into multidimensional cube data at several levels, you must implement all of the hierarchies on... 02 February 2010 13 min read
Rodney Landrum Managing Data Growth in SQL Server 'Help, my database ate my disk drives!'. Many DBAs spend most of their time dealing with variations of the problem... 21 January 2010 37 min read
Brad McGehee Database Maintenance Plans in SSMS: An Overview Maintenance plans are essential. Microsoft provide two tools, the Maintenance Plan Wizard and the Maintenance Plan designer, to assist the... 06 January 2010 23 min read
Richard Morris Itzik Ben-Gan: DBA of the Day Itzik Ben-Gan, who was one of our first Geeks of the Week in 2005, is so well known and popular... 06 January 2010 17 min read
Robert Sheldon Five Basic Steps for Implementing an Analysis Services Database To learn an application, nothing beats getting it up and running. Getting started with Analysis Services can be frustrating unless... 05 January 2010 18 min read
Barry King SQL Server Partitioning without Enterprise Edition Table partitioning is a valuable technique for managing very large database tables. It has always been possible with SQL Server,... 10 December 2009 6 min read
Robert Sheldon BCP Utility Guide: Import & Export SQL Server Data Master the SQL Server bcp command-line utility. Covers export, import, queryout, format files, authentication, and practical examples for bulk data... 10 December 2009 36 min read
Phil Factor Connection Strings, an Overview We asked Phil to come up with a simple explanation of connection strings. We somehow weren't expecting a 'quote of... 26 November 2009 13 min read
Robert Sheldon Managing Transaction Logs in SQL Server The Transaction Log provides the means by which either the complete set of tasks of a database transaction are performed... 12 November 2009 17 min read
Grant Fritchey Controlling Execution Plans with Hints The Query Optimizer gets it right most of the time, but occasionally it chooses a plan that isn't the best... 12 November 2009 38 min read
