(William Pearson) In this lesson, we will begin a “triptych” of articles that expose set functions that deal specifically with subsets – that is, each function returns a subset of a larger set as part of its operation. We will introduce the Head() function in this article, then follow it with th

This step-by-step article describes how to troubleshoot the most typical sources of the “Cannot generate SSPI context” error message. You may receive this error message under the following conditions: –You are connecting to SQL Server. –You are using Integrated Security. –Kerberos is used t

(Kirk Haselden) In early 2000, the Microsoft Data Transformation Services (DTS) development team I work on started revising DTS with the goals of building on previous success and of improving the product to support user requests and to provide a richer extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) p

(Brian Moran) SQL Server backups are useless if you can’t recover them. Backups are simply big disk files unless you have a recovery mechanism that puts those bits back into SQL Server when you need them. So when was the last time you tested your restore strategy? I’m not asking whether you’ve p

(William E. Pearson, III) In this article, we will introduce an area of considerable interest among MSAS developers and practitioners, and an area where optimization skills are vital to the efficient operation of both client and server. In a subset of upcoming articles that I will publish on a recur

(Don Schlichting) User Defined Functions are compact pieces of Transact SQL code, which can accept parameters, and return either a value, or a table. They are saved as individual work units, and are created using standard SQL commands. Data transformation and reference value retrieval are common

You may not be able to connect to an instance of SQL Server, and you may receive one of the following error messages. Error message 1 [Named Pipes]SQL Server does not exist or access denied. [Named Pipes]ConnectionOpen (Connect()). Error message 2 Unable to connect to server <SQL Serve

(James Simpson) This article and accompanying code demonstrates the theory and practice behind “Nested Sets”. The theory is applicable with any type hierarchy in any database, however the example code was written using SQL Server 2000 and every attempt has been made to make it compatible with most

This article covers some of the most frequently asked questions about Microsoft SQL Server 2000, version 8.0 servers.

I used to think that UNION was useful only when you needed to combine the results of two queries from different sources (e.g., tables, views) into one result set. However, using UNION is sometimes the quickest way to select from just one table. (R,$)