(Saumendra Poddar) Transactions group a set of tasks into a single execution unit. Each transaction begins with a specific task and ends when all the tasks in the group successfully complete. If any of the tasks fails, the transaction fails. Therefore, a transaction has only two results: success or

(Arthur Fuller) Relational databases are by definition two-dimensional—rows and columns. Online analytical processing (OLAP) databases introduce additional dimensions, which you can think of as perspectives or vantage points. Discover why it’s important to have a clear grasp of what dimensions are a

Twenty-two new webcasts are Scheduled for April, covering such topics as Server 2005 Express, Using Web Services To Connect to SQL Server 2005 from Your Smart Client Applications, Defending the Database and more.

(Jeremy Kadlec) Sometimes the best practices do not hit home, but the worst practices do. As such, in this article, the first part in a two part series, we will address a number of the worst practices for SQL Server performance that have been found in the field. These primarily relate to the system

(Scott) This article will build a DataGrid including a column of CheckBox controls that allows a user to select multiple rows for a detail view. One way to achieve this functionality without resorting to dynamic SQL is to use the IN operator.

(Barbara Darrow) Microsoft is poised to fire a shot to be heard ’round the business intelligence world later this year.

(Davide Mauri) The Data Trasformation Services are a powerful tool, and sometime its features are so useful that you’d like to invoke a DTS package not only from SQL Server but from an external program.

(Marcin Policht) In our series dedicated to new features implemented in SQL Server 2005 Beta 2, we have focused so far mostly on areas of design and functionality improvements, covering availability, scalability, and, more recently, security (including authentication, authorization, encryption, and

(Greg Robidoux) The value of SQL Server system (Master, Model, MSDB) database backups cannot be underestimated due to the significant amount of information residing in these databases. From an operational perspective, I recommend incorporating the system database backups on the same schedule as the

(Sergei Gundorov and Clark Hamilton) In the second of this three-part series, learn how to map well-formed XML from a standard SQL Server query to a single cell in a worksheet. The resulting output is an XML tree with non-repeating elements.