In the previous articles, Jacob Sebastian looked at using XML to save a sales order with variable numbers of line items to a SQL Server 2000 database. In this part, he expands upon the processing to access that data from multiple nodes.   Read more...

In the first part of this series, Jacob Sebastion showed us how to use XML to save a sales order to the database with a variable amount of line items. In part 2, he continues looking at XML in SQL Server 2000 with some advanced XML processing.   Read more...

How many times have you tried to save a sales order to your database? For many DBAs this is a common scenario and one of the challenges is the many round trips for the various line items. Jacob Sebastian brings us the first part of a four part series looking at how you can use XML to reduce the round trips in SQL Server 2000.   Read more...

SQL Server does a great job of handling concurrency & ensuring that users can make changes in multi-user systems without conflict. However there are times a strict calling order is needed.   Read more...

Attaching and detaching databases is old hat these days right? Do you know how to reattach a database that has more than 16 files? Or do you know what happens if you try to reattach a database that had two log files but one is missing/deleted? And even if you know the answer to that - do you know how to fix it without restoring from backup? Maybe it's not ALL old hat just yet!   Read more...

Part 1 of a 4 part series about ADO, this is a beginner level article designed to get you started using the ADO connection object. If you haven't used ADO so far, why not see what it's all about?   Read more...

Robert is our expert on dynamic sql. This week he offers some good hints for planning the contruction of a proc that will use dynamic sql. He also adds some suggestions on how to format the code so that when you return to it later, you can figure out what you were doing!   Read more...

We've had a lot of coverage of dynamic sql (including another great one from Robert Marda later this week) but this one is a little different. Done in a question/answer format, Andy tries to explain to junior developers why dynamic sql is to be avoided, how to do so, what to do when you can't.   Read more...

Mindy explores the metadata stored in SQL 2000 to show you how to produce a simple and useful data dictionary!   Read more...

As Robin points out there is no built in way to make sure users have strong passwords when using SQL authentication. There are a couple changes you can make (with appropriate warnings!) that will allow you to do this. Read on to find out why and how.   Read more...

This articles proposes storing the source code for stored procedures on disk rather than in the database itself, the intent to give developers the ability to easily change them or potentially to allow third party encryption of source code. (Note from SSC: If you choose to implement a technique like this, please be sure you understand the implications of exec'ing strings)   Read more...

This article shows you how to identify SQL Server performance problems and explains how the SERIALIZABLE transaction isolation level effected the performance of an OLTP application.  Read more...

Robert is back this week with a look at the text data type. Not the easiest thing to work with, but sometimes a varchar just doesn't give you the range you need.   Read more...

This article by Simon Galbraith (from Red Gate software, maker of SQL Compare) discusses migrating changes from development to staging, QA, and on to production. If you've never seen the need for a schema compare tool (Steve Jones!), this is worth reading.  Read more...

Ryan demonstrates how he arrived at a solution that allows you to create scripts from a stored procedure using SQL-DMO. If you get interested in DMO, we've got quite a bit of additional content here on the site to help you get going! Ryan is a new author here on the site, please take a minute to read his article, add a comment, maybe just say hello.   Read more...

Robert is our expert on dynamic sql. This week he offers some good hints for planning the contruction of a proc that will use dynamic sql. He also adds some suggestions on how to format the code so that when you return to it later, you can figure out what you were doing!   Read more...

We've had a lot of coverage of dynamic sql (including another great one from Robert Marda later this week) but this one is a little different. Done in a question/answer format, Andy tries to explain to junior developers why dynamic sql is to be avoided, how to do so, what to do when you can't.   Read more...

A monster book at 980 pages, it's written in 'how-to' format and has a ton of good material. Andy gave it the once over for us and reports back - see what he thinks!   Read more...

This one is pretty interesting, Andy discusses a few things he sees in comments that not only fail to add value, they end up costing extra time. There's room for discussion here, but definitely a discussion worth having - comments can make you or break you, here's a chance to think about what you think is important in commenting and pass that on to your development team.   Read more...

Are you using default values for your parameters? Using named parameters when you call the proc or passing the values by ordinal? Should you be? Andy thinks 6 out of 10 of our readers will agree with his point of view, we'll be a little more conservative and guess that 5 of out 10 will be closer.   Read more...

How many times have you tried to save a sales order to your database? For many DBAs this is a common scenario and one of the challenges is the many round trips for the various line items. Jacob Sebastian brings us the first part of a four part series looking at how you can use XML to reduce the round trips in SQL Server 2000.   Read more...

In the first part of this series, Jacob Sebastion showed us how to use XML to save a sales order to the database with a variable amount of line items. In part 2, he continues looking at XML in SQL Server 2000 with some advanced XML processing.   Read more...

In the previous articles, Jacob Sebastian looked at using XML to save a sales order with variable numbers of line items to a SQL Server 2000 database. In this part, he expands upon the processing to access that data from multiple nodes.   Read more...