(John Grover) In SQL Server, the built in conditions and policies are a great place to get started with monitoring your environment, but there are no facets for some aspects of SQL Server I want to monitor. How can I check on my environment using Policy Based Management?

(Shaun J Stuart) My phone rang at 4 AM last Sunday morning, which is never a good sign. It was a member of our IT team who was doing an upgrade to some software. He was concerned because a particular SQL statement had been running for 30 minutes so far and when this person performed the upgrade on t

(Richard Carr) Where locking causes problems with queries it can be useful to execute those queries with the NOLOCK hint. This specifies that a query should ignore existing locks and create no data locks. However, the hint introduces the potential of data corruption.

(Jignesh Trivedi) COALESCE is nothing but a version of ISNULL, that can take more than two parameters. COALESCE is also part of ANSI – 92. Basically it resturns the first non-null expression from its arguments.

(Tibor Nagy) I have been trying to tune my SQL Server and I noticed a few database settings for statistics. I also read the previous tip on automatic statistics updates. Could you please describe the Auto Create Statistics Async option?

(Adam Machanic) It is easy to get database monitoring wrong. There are several common-sense rules that can make all the difference between a monitoring system that works for you and helps to avoid database problems, and one that just creates a distraction.

(Franco Lopes) The SSRS report once ready needs to be formatted to make it pixel perfect for viewing and printing. The formatting can be classified into the following types:

(Pinal Dave) Paging is one of the most needed tasks when developers are developing applications. SQL Server has introduced various features of SQL Server 2000 to the latest version of SQL Server 2012.

Steve WynKoop and I talk a lot about designing and managing our professional careers on a weekly interview on SSWUG.org. This episode was about how we talk ourselves out of that dream job or interview. This article goes into more detail.

(Siddharth Mehta) Logic reusability is one of the most practiced aspects of database development. For example query / business logic developed in stored procedures for one application (say a .NET page for example), can be easily reused by another application (a SSIS ETL package or for a SSRS report