Fabiano Amorim Showplan Operator of the Week – BookMark/Key Lookup Fabiano continues in his mission to describe the major Showplan Operators used by SQL Server's Query Optimiser. This week he... 07 May 2010 7 min read
Robert Sheldon SQL Server Common Table Expression (CTE) Basics The SQL Server common table expression was introduced into standard T-SQL to simplify queries for which a derived table just... 29 April 2010 11 min read
Rod Colledge High Performance Storage Systems for SQL Server Rod Colledge turns his pessimistic mindset to storage systems, and describes the best way to configure the storage systems of... 29 April 2010 14 min read
Phil Factor Exploring SQL Server table metadata with SSMS and TSQL Phil shows how to start squeezing powerful magic from SSMS for doing a detailed exploration of the metadata of your... 29 April 2010 21 min read
Jonathan Lewis Oracle to SQL Server: Crossing the Great Divide, Part 1 When a SQL expert moves from Oracle to SQL Server, he can spot obvious strengths and weaknesses in the product... 28 April 2010 23 min read
Fabiano Amorim Showplan Operator of the Week – Compute Scalar The third part of Fabiano's mission to describe the major Showplan Operators used by SQL Server's Query Optimiser continues with... 28 April 2010 6 min read
Fabiano Amorim Showplan Operator of the Week – Concatenation Fabiano continues in his mission to describe, one week at a time, all the major Showplan Operators used by SQL... 22 April 2010 3 min read
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
Fabiano Amorim Showplan Operator of the week – Assert As part of his mission to explain the Query Optimiser in practical terms, Fabiano attempts the feat of describing, one... 14 April 2010 7 min read
Tony Davis Performance Tuning with SQL Server Dynamic Management views – eBook Download This is the book that will de-mystify the process of using Dynamic Management Views to collect the information you need... 15 March 2010 4 min read
Buck Woody Mission Critical: SQL Server 2008 Engine Post-Installation Even an experienced DBA finds it safer to double-check that all the tasks have been done, and in the right... 03 March 2010 3 min read
Robert Sheldon Adding a KPI to an SQL Server Analysis Services Cube Key Performance Indicators, which vary according to the application, are widely used as a measure of the performance of parts... 02 March 2010 14 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
Andrew Clarke Who Tests the Tester? It is scarcely surprising that it can take up to five years to release a new version of SQL Server... 19 February 2010 15 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
Laerte Junior Exceptional PowerShell DBA Pt 3 – Collation and Fragmentation In this final look into his everyday essentials, Laerte Junior provides some useful scripts for the DBA that use an... 11 February 2010 15 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
Paul Nielsen Switching rows and columns in SQL When they use SQL Server, one the commoner questions that Ms Access programmers ask is 'Where's the TRANSFORM/PIVOT command? So... 04 February 2010 4 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