Guest Columnist: Leo Peysakhovich

Datetime data in SQL Server can be a little confusing to work with, especially as many front end languages do not combine the date and time into a single datatype. As a result, T-SQL is sometimes used to manipulate and convert datetime data into more useable formats. Author Leo Peysakhovich has written about some tricks that he uses to reformat and work with datetime data.   Read more...

SQL Server has some great solutions for writing reports easily, ensuring quick service for your customers. However many of the quick ways of generating reports from the database include the column headers in the results. And often clients who expect customized work want to see labels that are more familiar to them. Leo Peysakhovich has developed a way that allows him to easily return custom labels from his stored procedures.   Read more...

Comparing two SQL Server tables to determine if the data is the same ought to be pretty simple. But then again, vendors like Red Gate Software sell tools to help you do it, so perhaps it isn't so simple. Author Leo Peysakhovich has to do this on a regular basis and none of the 3rd party products appear to work for him. Read his thoughts and samples on how he handles this at his job.   Read more...

User defined functions were added in SQL Server 7 and enhanced in SQL Server 2000, but they are still a relatively little used feature. Here's a look at a unique way that Leo Peysakhovich solved a problem using a UDF.   Read more...

NULL values in columns can indicate a few things, the value isn't known, it's not yet been filled in, or perhaps, as Leo Peysakhovich argues, the column isn't being used? How many SQL Server tables do you have with extra tables and columns that are not being used? Or maybe never have been? This article looks at a statistical analysis of columns using NULLs to determine if you might be able to remove certain columns.   Read more...

SQL Server Alerts provide a great way for the server to notify a DBA that some event has occurred, usually something bad that they need to fix. However alerts can also be used to drive business logic processes and enable some types of actions to be safely performed without requiring extraordinary rights by a user. Author Leo Peysakhovich brings us some ideas on how we can use alerts to implement business logic processing.   Read more...

Designing a SQL Server database is a challenging task. Making decisions about how to build tables, their relations, etc. can be a full time job for any DBA helping to build an application. Lookup tables are a part of just about every application that you work with or build a back end for. Leo Peysakhovich brings us an article on database design that deals specifically with lookup tables.   Read more...

SQL Server DTS is an amazing ETL tool. Parallel processing is not only possible, but author Leo Peysakhovich shows us how he does it in this article about his index rebuild process. By bundling DTS into SQL Server for free, Microsoft gave us a platform for not only ETL, but also many basic tasks that all DBAs are stuck working on. Read on to see if parallel processing of index rebuilds is something you can use.   Read more...

Index Creation Guidelines for SQL Server can be pretty sparse. Usually there are a couple, clustered index for ranges, nonclustered, etc. Leo Peysakhovich has taken some time to write down his guidelines based on his experience for creating indexes and the rational for doing so. He's also taken a few minutes to look at which indexes NOT to create, something that might be worth knowing..   Read more...

Do you know which of your databases are being backed up? Everyone answers "Yes", but I'm sure that there are times that someone creates a new database and you don't know about it. I know in my job, with hundreds of servers, it happens. Here's a technique for keeping track of those databases from Leo Peysakhovich.   Read more...

How can you tell if your code if performing well? Do you know what you want to look for when starting to analyze code? Here's an article from Leo Peysakhovich that looks at some of the things that you can use at a high level to improve the performance of your code.   Read more...

Leo reviews a new product as a follow up to his recent article about Monitoring Failed Job Steps.   Read more...

New Author! We've run a couple articles on similar topics, this one takes a slightly different approach. It's a short article and has two scripts included.   Read more...