New Author! Don Peterson writes his first article for us and explores why he considers XML to be...bad! There are some interesting points made here and if you've haven't thought about what XML means to you as a DBA, it's a subject worth spending some time on.   Read more...

Have you ever wanted to ensure that keywords in your data are easily searchable? Have you struggled with full-text search? New author Michael Ahmadi brings us an interesting idea for a keyword tracking and searching subsystem based on T-SQL and triggers.   Read more...

Continuing on with a look at SQL Server 205 partitioning features, Andy Warren delves into archiving techniques.   Read more...

SQL Server guru Andy Warren brings us a list of things that he considers when things go wrong. Read about some of the common sense approaches to solving performance and other problems.   Read more...

The Sarbanes-Oxley act has drastically changed the jobs of many DBAs with the audit and reporting requirements this act entails. Brandie Tarvin brings us some hints about how you can go about complying with the new requirements.   Read more...

Simon Sabin is always cagey about giving advice on the sort of hardware to run SQL Server on, but admits to some general rules.   Read more...

Auditing is something that almost every DBA needs to tackle at some point in his or her career. David McKinney brings a new twist on the solution by using XML and XSL to help implement auditing in your SQL Server application.   Read more...

To run with the pack in terms of performance, productivity, and competition, servers that are long in the tooth have to be put out to pasture regularly. But there might be (and usually is) some life left in these early retirees, and they can still be put to good use.  Read more...

How many cores (or hardware threads) can your code harness to get its answers faster?  Read more...

Service-Component Architectures (SCA) provide a programming model for implementing Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA)  Read more...

When installing a SQL Server 2005 instance on your SQL 2000 machine, there are upgrade and compability issues such as linked servers, multi-server administration and log shipping.  Read more...

Managing a large number of servers can be quite the challenge for many DBAs and it seems to get worse each year as more servers are added without an increase in staffing. New author Mark Tierney brings us the first part of a series on the framework he's built to help manage his servers.   Read more...

A look at Intel and AMD architectures for the future.   Read more...

Proper disk configuration can result in a lifetime of high performance for SQL Server databases. Go beyond storage capacity requirements and consider drive performance.  Read more...

Have you ever wanted to ensure that keywords in your data are easily searchable? Have you struggled with full-text search? New author Michael Ahmadi brings us an interesting idea for a keyword tracking and searching subsystem based on T-SQL and triggers.   Read more...

I regularly use SQLIO.EXE to gauge the maximum throughput a disk subsystem can sustain. Recently Microsoft released SQLIOSIM.EXE to provide better results for this type of test. However they didn't release any documentation on the tool and I could never figure out what it was trying to tell me. It looks like they finally did release a Knowledge Base article on SQLIOSIM. Give it a spin. I'd be curious to hear what you think of the tool.   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...

Your development system might be as valuable as your servers, but is it worth setting up with RAID? Read an interesting argument from one of the largest custom computer builder.  Read more...

As a DBA, you can find very useful information in the Windows event logs. About important events, the health of your SQL Server and the operating system it runs on. Unfortunately, the logs also contain a lot of useless information. Some applications have a tendency to log hundreds of events every day, filling up the logs very quickly with info that you, as a DBA, do not need. But you still need to see that important message that informs you the server is going to crash if you don’t take action.   Read more...

Damon Armstrong learned the hard way about the consequences of not having a clearly defined project scope or work contract  Read more...