Robert Sheldon Working with Precedence Constraints in SQL Server Integration Services In SSIS, tasks are linked by precedence constraints. A task will only execute if the condition that is set by... 07 July 2009 11 min read
Joe Celko Avoiding the EAV of Destruction A forum posting, from someone who wanted a better solution to the common problem of handling global settings in a... 18 June 2009 11 min read
Brad McGehee Brad’s Sure Guide to Indexes In order to best appreciate the reasons for, or importance of, the various administrative tasks that are needed for indexes,... 11 June 2009 40 min read
Karla Kay Remail Thinking of Setting up a SQL Server Users Group? The work of setting up a SQL Users Group isn't always easy, but, as Karla relates, it can be a... 03 June 2009 11 min read
Jaap Wesselius Windows Server Virtualisation: Hyper-V, an Introduction For SQL Server and Exchange Server, Windows Server Virtualization is going to be increasingly important as a way for the... 01 June 2009 11 min read
Barry King Reporting Services with Style Even when Microsoft neglect a feature, there are always pioneers who find ways of getting around the problem. Such is... 28 May 2009 10 min read
Robert Sheldon Using the FOR XML Clause to Return Query Results as XML The FOR XML clause in SQL Server causes a lot of difficulty, mainly because it is rather poorly explained in... 27 May 2009 36 min read
Jacob Sebastian Introduction to XML Schema What is an XML Schema, and why is it important? How did XSD develop from its precursors, DTD and XDR?... 07 May 2009 14 min read
Joe Celko SQL and the Snare of Three-Valued Logic The whole subject of the Three-Valued (also known as ternary, trivalent or 3VL) Logic of SQL tends to trip people... 07 May 2009 13 min read
Anith Sen Facts and Fallacies about First Normal Form When discussing the normalisation process, it is always the First Normal Form that causes the most grief and confusion. Anith... 07 May 2009 15 min read
Richard Morris Marc Wick: Geek of the Week Marc Wick is the genius behind GeoNames, the free Web Service that powers a number of popular GPS applications and... 06 May 2009 8 min read
Robert Sheldon XML Data Modification Language Workbench XML Data Modification Language (XML DML) allows you to modify and update XML data. When working with SQL Server Databases,... 28 April 2009 21 min read
Chris Massey Free eBook: SQL Server Crib-Sheet Compendium For everything you need to know, rather than want to know, about SQL Server Reporting Services, replication, backup, XML, performance,... 24 April 2009 1 min read
Ben Hall Embedding IronRuby and the DLR into SQL Data Generator You can embed DLR-based languages such as IronPython and IronRuby into applications. This gives you instant scripting, and with it,... 23 April 2009 14 min read
Phil Factor CLR Assembly RegEx Functions for SQL Server by Example Phil Factor presents a simple CLR Assembly to allow SQL Server users to access all the powerful RegEx library methods... 15 April 2009 15 min read
Joe Celko Median Workbench SQL Server database engine doesn't have a MEDIAN() aggregate function. This is probably because there are several types of median,... 05 April 2009 15 min read
Gail Shaw Finding the causes of poor performance in SQL Server, Part 2 In the first part of this series of articles, Gail showed how to find the procedures that contributed most to... 03 April 2009 28 min read
Geoffrey Braaf Solving Performance Problems in an ASP.NET application with ANTS Profiler You have a Data-Access Layer that is generating dynamic SQL, and you haven't the time to understand the implementation of... 31 March 2009 6 min read
Robert Sheldon Working with Property Expressions in SQL Server Integration Services Property Expressions in SSIS packages are assigned to a property at run time. This allows parameters to be passed to... 16 March 2009 12 min read
Brad McGehee How to Identify Blocking Problems with SQL Profiler Many SQL Server developers and DBAs have, in the past, had their own favourite diagnostic Stored Procedures for investigating blocking... 13 March 2009 11 min read
