(Thomas LaRock) As databases get larger, the time for database backups to complete grows as well. Unfortunately, the time window for your backups may not increase. It could very well be the case that you reach a point where your backups will not finish in a specified amount of time.

(Roman Rehak) The data collector is a new feature in SQL Server 2008 designed to collect performance-related data from multiple servers, store it in a central data warehouse and present the data through reports in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). (R)

(Don Kiely) Even in this era of dirt-cheap terabyte storage devices, efficient data storage and storage management is still a prime concern for both database administrators and developers. So it’s particularly vexing that in a typical SQL Server database, null data takes up storage space—potentially

(Buck Woody) I’m writing a series of articles on how to migrate “departmental” data into SQL Server. I also hold workshops on the entire process – from discovering that the data exists to the modeling process and then how to design the Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) process. Finally I write about

(Bru Medishetty) Every database user, be it an end user, a developer or an administrator knows that indexes are one of the primary ways of making a query perform better. It is known that having indexes on large tables helps the Database Management System by using the existing indexes when queries ne

(Anu Chawla) Last week, we touched on the topic of fragmentation in Fragmentation and What You Can Do about It. This week, we take a deeper look into the problem and tell you how to defragment your indexes.

(Serdar Yegulalp) I don’t think I’ve ever worked on just one copy of a given database at a time, especially for a public-facing project. There has always been at least two copies — the public version and whatever iterations I’ve used privately for development and testing. Keeping the schemas for th

(Marko Parkkola) This is a subject which is very basic thing in relational databases but often not very well understood and sometimes badly implemented. There are of course many ways to do this but I concentrate only two cases, one which is “the right way” and one which is definitely wrong way.

(Sadequl Hussain) SQL Server maintains a running log of its operations. This log includes information about the start-up and recovery events, user actions, backups, configuration changes, invalid login attempts, errors, warnings etc. Every time the SQL service starts up, a new log file is created. T

(Ray Barley) I’m trying to create a report that uses a parent-child hierarchy in a dimension of a SQL Server Analysis Services cube. I’ve done this before where I had a parent-child hierarchy in a SQL Server relational database, but the cube has me completely baffled. Can you provide an example of