Many Microsoft SQL Server 2000 administrators consider removing the xp_cmdshell stored procedure from SQL Server as part of their security plan. Although the extended stored procedure can be removed, removal has significant support and functionality implications. Examine other security settings befo

Creating an automated SQL query that will retrieve timely data and transmit that information to a person who can act upon it is a basic task for many SQL Server database administrators. However, the process for developing that automated query is not always as obvious as you might expect. This do

(Tal Kelley) Several State and Federal contracts that I have worked on in the past have wanted to keep track of all changes to a particular record, such as who modified the record, what kind of modification took place, and when the record modification occurred. I decided to solve this problem wi

(Slava Oks) Hardware trends affect choices we make when designing and developing software. In the current market personal computers with high number of CPUs are no longer fiction – they are reality. Exploiting of such features as symmetric multi-threading, SMT, multiple CPUs per socket, weaker consi

(Muthusamy Anantha Kumar) Microsoft introduces new operators PIVOT and UNPIVOT in SQL Server 2005. Traditionally we create queries using the CASE statement and aggregate function in order to produce cross-tab reports. This article illustrates the usage of the new operators, PIVOT and UNPIVOT.

(Arthur Fuller) As Martha Stewart might say, hardware upgrades are a good thing—that is, until stuff that used to work just fine suddenly breaks for no apparent reason. In moments like this, you invariably end up looking bad, and must drop everything else to find and fix the problems immediately.

(Greg Robidoux) Running SQL Server backups is one process that can take a long time. With databases continuing to grow, the time it takes to run backups also continues to grow. At one point, a 100 GB database was considered a very large database. Today it’s the norm, and many databases are beginning

(Tony Patton) Image files are a standard part of every ASP.NET application. While most sites use Web server directories to store image files, another option is utilizing a database. The database provides a better approach to managing application image files. In this article, we examine using SQL Ser

(William Pearson) In our previous article, Mastering OLAP Reporting: Percent of Total – Two Perspectives, we examined two approaches to meeting a common business requirement, the generation of percent of total values, within the integrated Microsoft Business Intelligence solution – or, more specific

(Serdar Yegulalp) SQL Server 7 and SQL Server 2000 have many differences, but some of them are far less obvious than others. One of the most important “hidden” differences is how data types automatically are converted in certain expressions. If you transport expressions to SQL Server 2000 that were