In this article, Brian looks at how Citrix MetaFrame can use SQL Server for its internal data repository. The basic operation of SQL Server in a Citrix MetaFrame installation is covered. In addition, Brian looks at how a DBA is an integral part of the support team for a successful Citrix MetaFrame farm.   Read more...

Ensuring that your disk subsystem performs well and does not run out of space is a balancing act that many DBAs learn over time through trial and "out of space" errors. New author Arindam Banerjee takes a look at some of the things to consider when capacity planning.   Read more...

Auditing, analyzing and documenting your SQL Server installation is becoming more important all the time, especially as more and more attention is being paid to the security of your environment. Chad Miller brings us a look at a framework and a sample document you can use in your environment to conduct an audit.   Read more...

One of our favorite authors is back with a great how-to on log shipping. This isn't the baked in log shipping, this is a code your own solution that gives you a starting point for your situation. Even if you don't need it now, it's worth looking at to gain a better understanding of how shipping works.   Read more...

Andy has been busy lately on a project you'll be hearing more about soon (!), but he did manage to get part four of his managing jobs series done. This article discusses ideas for patterns to follow when building jobs, including writing to the console, setting errorlevels, and how to get them installed on the server. DBA's, if you're not developers, look at this article - this is stuff you can take to your development team and get better/more manageable jobs.   Read more...

This articles makes the case for using SQL LiteSpeed over other backup solutions and presents some notes about why the DBA should manage backups rather than offloading to network administration.   Read more...

Seagate has a white paper out that discusses how faster (15k rpm) drives can lead to lower cost of ownership. Interesting, and worth looking into.   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...

Greg returns with an article based on some practical experience using QA templates to save time and work. Good examples, good work through, good idea!   Read more...

This article looks at change management from the perspective of the DBA, including how to use source control to your advantage and planning for 'self-healing' apps.  Read more...

This week Andy looks at where, when, and how jobs should be run and why you need to think about those items before you build the job. Part of this is deciding what runs on production servers and what doesn't.   Read more...

Jobs are pretty basic aren't they? They are until you get a couple hundred, or a thousand. Andy continues talking about managing jobs by standardizing how you handle notifications and failures, and talks about an interesting idea to monitor jobs separately from SQL Agent. Worth reading!   Read more...

How many jobs do you have? 10? 100? 1000? Andy makes the point that what works to manage for a small number of jobs doesn't work when that number doubles or triples (well, unless you only had 1 job to start with!). In part one of two, this article looks at ideas for using categories and naming conventions to get things under control.   Read more...

Andy had a semi-disaster similar to the one he wrote about last year. Interesting to see the kinds of problems that happen to other people. This article raises some interesting points that are outside the scope of basic disaster recovery, looking at how/when to move databases to a different server and how to reduce the server load dynamically.   Read more...

We're curious to see what our readers have to say about this one! How many of us have tables accruing data that won't be used and/or isn't of any value? At what point do we get rid of it to free up resources?   Read more...

In this follow up to one of our most popular articles, Andy responds to comments posted by readers and discusses how to manage SQL logins effectively in your applications.   Read more...

In this follow up article Andy looks at how maintenance plans report errors and how they actually accomplish what they do. A little snooping with Profiler reveals all!   Read more...

In this article, Brian looks at how Citrix MetaFrame can use SQL Server for its internal data repository. The basic operation of SQL Server in a Citrix MetaFrame installation is covered. In addition, Brian looks at how a DBA is an integral part of the support team for a successful Citrix MetaFrame farm.   Read more...

Version control for stored procedures isn't always popular and certainly isn't easy. Or can it be? Andy discusses a technique he used on a recent project that you might find interesting.   Read more...

One of the common questions that Brian Knight sees in the newsgroups is what is a DBA officially supposed to be doing? In this article, Brian covers the many hats a DBA can and does wear.   Read more...