(rthutchison) The SQL Utility Control Point is a new feature introduced in SQL Server 2008 R2. The SQL Server Control Point provides visibility into resource utilization of SQL Server Instances in your environment. More information on the Multi-Server management capabilities in SQL Server 2008 R2

SQL Server 2008 R2 has a lot of new features and we will be covering some of them in the upcoming posts. One of those features is DAC – Data Tier Applications. This is not to be confused with the existing DAC acronym – Dedicated Admin Connection. Using DAC, one can script out the meta data inform

(Buck Woody) This is the third article in a series of a formal process you can follow to migrate data stored in “departmental data stores” (such as Excel, text files, XML documents and so on) into a Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) like SQL Server. The first article in this series is he

(Alexander Kuznetsov) My second take at the same problem I blogged about yesterday:

(Thomas LaRock) You need to quickly ascertain if any linked servers for your SQL Servers have had recent configuration changes. In this tip we cover the step by step process for setting up a policy to check for when there have been any linked server changes to your servers.

(Simon Sabin) Saving a hierarchy of data from an XML document into a set of tables is a problem when the only relationship between nodes in the hierarchy is the position of the node. SQL doesn’t like implied things like this. It likes things to be explicit.

(Ajay Jagannathan) Often we run into situations where there is a need to add a trace flag or a startup parameter other than the default startup parameters that SQL Server uses. Some of the common parameters or trace flags include (but not limited to) the following:

(Ben Nevarez) Last year when I presented my session regarding the Query Optimizer at the PASS Summit and at a couple of local user groups, I was asked how the estimated CPU and I/O costs in an execution plan are calculated. Since Microsoft does not publish how these costs are calculated all I could

(Gregory A. Larsen) Determining which columns to select for your indexes is critical. Having a little knowledge of how your application is using your database columns and how SQL Server processes indexes helps you make good decisions when you create your indexes.

(Roman Rehak) As you most likely know, log shipping is one of several high-availability features built into Microsoft SQL Server. It allows you to easily set up automation of log backups to copy the backed up files and restore them on a standby server. (R)