(Pinal Dave) In this era of standards, many organizations want to be using some of the cutting edge technologies in their organizations. In many of these interactions I was lucky enough to meet few DBA’s who give me interesting challenges to meet within their organizations.

(Daniel Farina) Your boss gives you a text file to import into a SQL Server database. It looks like a piece of cake, but you suddenly realize that the text file is in EBCDIC format. In this tip I will show you how to proceed to convert EBCDIC data on the fly in a Data Flow Task with a Script […]

(Derek E Wilson) Everyone looks at the new features when trying to determine when to upgrade from an older version of SQL Server to a newer release. There are many factors to consider and for every environment certain features have a higher priority and need for implementation than others.

(Melissa Coates) If you plan to promote a SQL Server MDS (Master Data Services) model from Dev and/or QA to Production, there’s a few particulars you need to know to get it right. In this entry I’m focusing on using the “MDSModelDeploy” utility since it offers the most flexibility.

(Shreyanka Mathapati) We have function: sys.fn_hadr_is_primary_replica in SQL 2014 Used to determine if the current replica is the primary.

(Pinal Dave) I am always amazed to see the questions asked by my blog reader which lead me to learn more about SQL Server. Here is the question which took me little time to figure out the answer.

(Chris Webb) Following on from my recent post on Power BI and Excel 2016 news, here are some more details about the new BI-related features in the Excel 2016 Preview.

(Erin Youtzy) A few years ago, I was working as a contractor for a Federal Government organization on the National Help Desk. It was my responsibility to build and maintain managerial statistical SQL Server Reporting Services reports.

(Paul White) Though they come with many restrictions and some important implementation caveats, indexed views are still a very powerful SQL Server feature when correctly employed in the right circumstances. One common use is to provide a pre-aggregated view of underlying data, giving users the abili

(Pinal Dave) As part of continued series of ReadOny databases, the earlier blog had an interesting comment that read as some people were getting errors of 5120 and others. This got me curious and was in the pending list of solutions in some way.