Featured Article(s) Book Review: Practical SQL Handbook: Using SQL Variants A review of the book – it’s targeted at the beginner DBA, and part of a series of titles for this market. Best Practices for Business Intelligence "Complexity Curve" Peter wrote in with thoughts from his perspective – and specifically asking (paraphrasing) what the benefit is for third-party tools if […]

Featured Article(s) Tips for using SQL Server 2005 Query Hints (Part 2) Here are some helpful tips to optimize your SQL Server 2005 queries by using hints. Business Intelligence – Moving from Office to More Customized Solutions Some solid feedback from a number of readers about how you approach BI solutions. Essentially, the question was about when you move from […]

Featured Article(s) BCP Basics – an Introduction This article will cover the basics of BCP – get the basics and how you can apply them to your work. How Do You Do BI with SQL Server? Things are shifting with Microsoft’s direction with Business Intelligence-type support for SQL Server. Not going away, just shifting and focusing (changes with performance point). […]

Featured Article(s) Understanding the ORDER BY clause The ORDER BY clause acts differently in logical query processing. The article explains such behaviors of ORDER BY with the aid of query execution plans. Asking the Right Questions I wrote last week about asking the right questions and, specifically, at the right time. The original point was centered around gathering statistics at […]

Featured Article(s) SQL Statement Runtime in MS The following stored procedure usp_CalcMsExecTime gets a string varchar(4000) of a SQL statement and calculates the time (in Miliseconds)it took to execute. Additional Thoughts on Tuning I can’t tell how many times I’ve had this conversation: Me: "When do you want to capture the load on SQL Server so we can see what’s […]

Featured Article(s) Freespace – A DBA’s Favorite View One of a DBA’s main worries is the amount of freespace in a tablespace. This article will present a view that I use on a daily basis to monitor tablespace freespace. This view is one of my most frequently used tools and has help keep me out of trouble. Tuning, Troubleshooting – […]

Featured Article(s) Tips for using SQL Server 2005 Query Hints (Part 1) Here are some helpful tips to optimize your SQL Server 2005 queries by using hints. Query Optimization Tips Yesterday I wrote about a quick approach to figuring out which of a few different ways is the best query to run. I ran across a great article from Pinal […]

Featured Article(s) Business Continuity planning for SQL Server Business Continuity planning for SQL server. Find out tips and an approach to your planning. SQL Server Execution Plan and Tuning When was the last time you reviewed the execution plan for your popular queries in the system? This seems like one of the tools that gets attention when there are problems, […]

Independent SQL Server Help Or, at least help with your independent support of SQL Server. I asked about whether you thought this might be a good idea last week. Specifically, we’re considering a series about helping run a consulting business – either administrative or development – and the thought was to have information on common business issues that come up […]

Featured Article(s) Doing More with Less Money on Your Disks I just received an email not too long ago where a DBA was being forced into a situation where he was going to have to order equipment to upgrade his SQL Server but with the kind of budget is used to buy a couple of desktops. Converting from DTS to […]