With the Data Transformation Services (DTS) Lookup object, you can retrieve data from locations other than the immediate source. A query and a connection is associated with the lookup. If the query returns more than a single column, the Lookup object returns the results in a zero-based array.

(Itzik Ben-Gan) Temporal calculations—that is, calculations based on dates and times—are often hard to put together. One reason they’re so tricky is that more than one convention exists for expressing starting and ending dates and times. For example, we generally accept that January is the first mon

(Mahesh Chand) SQL provides statements to create new databases and database objects. You can execute these statements from your program to create databases programmatically. In this article, you’ll see how to create a new SQL Server database and its objects such as table, stored procedures, view

(Mahesh Chand) Before we look at Longhorn programming model, let’s take a quick look at current programming model in Windows. In Windows, we can write two types of applications – Windows based or Web based. In .NET, usually we use Windows Forms to write Windows applications and Web Forms (ASP.NET)

(Diana Kelley) Patch management is a little like flossing your teeth. Everyone knows they’re supposed to do it, but most of us still don’t. Some pundits say the simple answer for patching lies in proactivity. Get the patch applied before an incident occurs, and keep the problem from occurring ra

(John Peterson) Some scripts you have to write… others you write because they’re interesting or just plain cool… and finally there are scripts like this… scripts that don’t do much and take longer to write then it would have taken you to just do what you wrote the script to do! Let me expl

Consider for a moment just how hideous the following URL is: http://www.zope.org/dtShow?MEMBER=mcdonc&TIME=3am There’s no way you’re going to tell your mom that URL over the phone. You’re gonna have to email it to her, or in the worst case, drive over to her house and type it in for her if y

(Rob Hawthorne) SQL Server is a great RDMS application, but its installation and configuration options leave the seasoned SQL user crying out for more. Upon install, SQL Server 2000’s options are limited in a number of ways. For example, it provides no features for separating the transaction logs fr

(Manohar Kamath) If you have worked with SQL Server, you are probably familiar with identity columns. These are equivalent to the “AutoNumber” columns in Access. The main purpose of these columns is to provide a primary key to the table, when a primary key can not be defined using other fields in th

(Brian Moran) If you didn’t make it to the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC) this year, then you missed a tremendous amount of information about upcoming Microsoft technologies, including SQL Server’s next release, code-named Yukon. Fortunately, you don’t have to miss all the techni