(Michael Otey and Denielle Otey) In today’s businesses, decision-making processes and daily operations often depend heavily on data that is stored in a variety of data storage systems, formats, and locations. In order to turn this data into useful business information, the data typically needs to be

(Mary Ann Richardson) SQL Server lets you use one command to quickly create a new table containing a subset of records from a larger table. For example, suppose in Access you want to create a phone list for all employees in the Fort Myers region. To do this, you can create a new table containing onl

(Gregory A. Larsen) Every DBA needs a few tricks up his/her sleeves to help them better manage their SQL Server 2000 environment. In this article I will explore a couple of such tricks. I will first explore how to cycle the SQL Server error log, and why you might want to do this. Secondly I will dis

(Alex Kozak) When I was writing code for user interfaces, I needed to present data in different ways. Logically it wasn’t difficult, but since the presentation layout was often quite different from the storage (tables’) structure, I had to use numerous record sets, loops, and arrays to manipulate th

(Julian Skinner) One advantage of CLR assemblies is the ability to consume web services from within the database. This wouldn’t be easy with T-SQL, and would also require a lot of work in an unmanaged extended stored procedure. With .NET, it’s almost as simple as accessing a local DLL.

(Marcin Policht) After dedicating most recently published articles to the Data Flow features of SQL Server 2005 Integration Services (focusing mainly on the characteristics of the Script Component), we will return to the Control Flow-related topics. In particular, we will concentrate on tasks design

(Bryan Sylverson) To help you learn to code SELECT statements, this chapter starts by presenting its basic syntax. Next, it presents several examples that will give you an idea of what you can do with this statement. Then, the rest of this chapter will teach you the details of coding this statement.

(Brian Mains) With the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 product, a new set of .NET API’s are available. These API’s can be used to interface with a SQL Server (called SMO) to perform a multitude of actions. For example, the APIs can retrieve all of the databases, tables, and columns that reside on a specif

(Joshua Greenberg) Rules play a central role in a wide variety of applications. In addition to the declarative specification of business rules, the simple rule engine design described in this article can be used to implement state machines, predicate dispatchers, or any other rule-based system.

(Baya Pavliashvili) Microsoft Analysis Services (MSAS) offers a variety of useful wizards to get you up-to-speed with building dimensions and cubes. In fact, the wizards are very useful and make the life of a cube architect easier. However, there is much functionality that isn’t available through wi