(Gregory A. Larsen) If you have yet to find out about the little extended stored procedure gem known as “xp_cmdshell”, then this article is for you. In this article, I will cover what “xp_cmdshell” is and different things you can use it for. If you already know something about “xp_cmdshell” then

(Brian Knight) Do you consider yourself solely a SQL Server production DBA? You know, the DBA whose job is to make requested changes in production and fix problems if they occur. If so, watch out. That hearse outside your cube may be for your career soon. Much of this is market forces and a lot of t

If you are running Microsoft SQL Server databases to support critical enterprise applications, you are part of a growing trend. The low cost and performance benefits of using Microsoft SQL Server on the Microsoft Windows NT and Windows 2000 platforms have fueled the growth of SQL Server as a platfor

(John Foley) Microsoft disclosed plans to release inexpensive, lightweight versions of its Visual Studio developer’s tools and SQL Server database for nonprofessional developers. The stripped-down editions of Microsoft’s flagship development environment and database are aimed at students, hobbyi

(William Vaughn) No matter what your job, if you work with SQL Server, you need to understand the Common Language Runtime (CLR), the engine that facilitates the execution of all managed code in the .NET Framework. The CLR is one of the most innovative additions to the next SQL Server release, SQ

(Brian Moran) SQL Server is executing a procedure, sp_reset_connection, that my code doesn’t call. What is sp_reset_connection? (R,$)

(Robert Marda) In this article I will show you how you can make your own system stored procedure. Simply put, a system stored procedure is any stored procedure with a name that starts with sp_ that is found in the master database. These SP’s can be executed from any database and will run from th

(Gail Tieh) If you’re a database developer, you’ve no doubt heard of On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) and the advantages of analysis using multi-dimensional, pre-aggregated data. Maybe you’ve even thought about creating your own multidimensional cubes to give your end users true ad hoc capabilit

(Bob Newstadt) This article presents code to compute a trimmed mean in SQL. The trimmed mean is a more robust version of the simple mean (SQL AVG() aggregate function). It is a useful tool for summarizing ill-behaved real world data.

(William Pearson) In this article, we will examine “period-to-date” aggregations, a common business requirement. Year-to-Date totals top the list in popularity here, but the same concept of accumulation over a period range applies at subordinate time levels, as well. We will examine the means of