Jul 20, 2009
You’re busy coding away at your workstation when all of a sudden your manager walks over to you all excited and begins discussing with you, the details of this great new application your company has just aquired. It turns out that he wants you to look after and administer this newly aquired application platform, which(…)
Jul 9, 2009
What’s the problem? How to configure SQL Server Reporting Services 2005 to permit users to assign the delivery email address for their own subscriptions. Why does SQL Server work this way? When you subscribe to a report, the e-mail delivery settings you work with vary depending on whether your Role includes the “Manage individual subscriptions”(…)
Jul 1, 2009
As you no doubt already know, there is a ridiculously large amount of SQL Server Information available out there on the internet. Whether you’re browsing forums, web sites or blogs, knowing what the best sources of SQL Server information are and more importantly which one’s you can trust, can be tricky. So to help you(…)
Jun 30, 2009
Some of the moderators over at the MSDN SQL Server Forums have got together and collated a reference of solutions to common T-SQL problems. As always, all quality resources get added to the SQL Server Resrouces area of this site.
Jun 29, 2009
It normally is not my style to write a blog post solely about a particular article someone else has published. Typically I just go ahead and add quality resources to the SQL Server Resources area of this site that I have either found myself or had recommended to me. In this case however an exception(…)
Jun 25, 2009
Michelle Ufford (aka SQLFool) has released an update to her excellent index optimisation script. If you are not already using something similar to simplify your index optimisation database maintenance processes then you will find this to be extremely useful. Check it out here: Index Defrag Script, V3.0 Michelle Ufford (aka SQLFool) has released an update(…)
Jun 5, 2009
Paul Randal pointed me in the direction of an awesome resource list of FREE SQL Server tools. There is an absolute mountain of quality stuff here and I wanted to share it with you all. Free SQL Server Tools that might make your life easier Be sure to me know which resources you use and(…)
Jun 5, 2009
One of my favorite SQL Server authors, Michelle Ufford recently posted her method for generating a sql random number, in the post Random Number Generator in T-SQL. This got me thinking and I decided to do a little investigation of my own to identify what is indeed the best method to generate a random number in SQL Server. What is(…)
Jun 3, 2009
You may already be aware that I am a big advocate of the SQL Server Dynamic Management Views (DMV’s) and the benifits that they bring to the Database Administrator. They certainly came in handy with a requirement I had recently whereby I needed to identify the IP Address of a specific SQL Server Login and(…)
May 27, 2009
There have been quite a few queries on the forums this past week with regard to performing fast delete operations on large tables and I wanted to share some of the possible solutions here with you. Fast ordered delete using a view To perform a fast ordered delete, take a look at the article Fast Ordered(…)
May 27, 2009
I’m sure that, like myself, you are all big advocates of documentation and that you understand the importance of keeping such literary masterpieces up to date. It may then interest you to know an update to SQL Server 2008 Books Online was released this week. You can download the update from the following location. SQL(…)
May 15, 2009
I was investigating a performance issue recently and so thought I would share the T-SQL query that I created with you. There’s nothing new or magic here, the code snippet simply identifies the top 20 most expensive queries (currently cached) based on the cumulative CPU cost. The query returns both the SQL Text from the(…)
May 7, 2009
There has been quite a bit of activity this past week in the SQL Server community regarding how to secure a role as a Junior DBA. Brent Ozar has posted a number of articles here and @SQLBatman has also been busy posting Junior DBA Questions. Both authors make some excellent points but what if you(…)
May 6, 2009
Have you ever come across a stored procedure that utilises parameters and performs like a dream the majority of the time but for some reason crawls along on some other occasions? Well the chances are that this is down to SQL Server Parameter Sniffing. I was re-reading through the white paper Batch Compilation, Recompilation, and(…)
Apr 21, 2009
An excellent discussion by Gail Shaw has been posted on her Blog SQL in the Wild, regarding the ongoing debate surrounding the inherent adversity there seems to be between those two illustrious groups we know and love as Developers and DBA’s. I find it quite disheartening that there seems to be a presumption between these(…)
Apr 17, 2009
Here’s a solution to an issue that you may have come up against when designing a SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) report requiring Datetime parameters, that uses a SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) data source. What’s the problem? When you create a dataset from a SSAS data source, by default the date values returned from(…)
Apr 16, 2009
No doubt you already know that I love nothing more than getting my hands on excellent technical resources for SQL Server. Well hot off the press is the latest Whitepaper offering from Microsoft that looks at troubleshooting performance problems in SQL Server 2008. Naturally you may already be familiar with some of the techniques and(…)
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