Free SQL Server 2000 Encryption for your data!!! Author Michael Coles has put together a tolljit and some XPs that you can use to encrypt your data with the Blowfish algorithm. It is hard to write good applications that encrpyt data and manage the keys and security. This will give you a great headstart on protecting your data.   Read more...

This article by Chris Kempster covers a wide variety of areas concerned with data migration. Primarily, it focuses on process, standards and some of the many issues to consider when undertaking this role.   Read more...

DTS is a fantastic ETL tool and it is often used to import Excel documents. However this can be a manual process in many cases in setting up the package. New author Sloan Holliday brings us a way that you can leverage Office XP's automation facilities and XML to import data into SQL Server.   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...

Have you ever had a need to run a query or a process as soon as SQL Server starts? Or run some set of tasks when SQL Server Agent Starts? Possibly you want to run a cleanup routine, a copy process or have some task started each time SQL server or SQL Agent is started. Well if this is the case then this article will discuss a couple of options you might consider using to accomplish automatically running your process.  Read more...

Auditing SQL Server, or any system, is not an easy task and with new regulations like Sarbanes-Oxley, it is becoming a full time job in some environments. Chad Miller brings us a way that he developed with Excel and some scripting to automate some of the security information for a large installation of SQL Servers.   Read more...

Query Analyzer has been a great tool in SQL Server 2000 and while it is superceeded in SQL Server 2005, lots of us will be using it for some time to come. New author Yakov Shlafman brings us some references and tricks for this essential DBA tool.   Read more...

SQL Server 2000 replication is the easiest so far to setup and work with. However there are some areas that you can get yourself into trouble with if you are not careful. New author Chris Rock brings us a few lessons learned in getting replication working with a remote office.   Read more...

It has not been clear to what extent fragmentation, either internal or external, truly affects the performance of your SQL Server 2000 databases. New author Koby Biller discusses some of the impacts that it could have and has a free tool for download that can help you determine how fragmented your disk truly is.   Read more...

Two weeks ago Andy started his wildly successful series on Worst Practices. This week he continues that series discussing why failing to use primary keys and clustered indexes are worst practices. Agree or disagree, read the article and join the discussion. One thing you'll have to admit, reading an article by Andy is a lot more interesting than reading Books Online!   Read more...

Free SQL Server 2000 Encryption for your data!!! Author Michael Coles has put together a tolljit and some XPs that you can use to encrypt your data with the Blowfish algorithm. It is hard to write good applications that encrpyt data and manage the keys and security. This will give you a great headstart on protecting your data.   Read more...

There are times when a new application or time period requires the creation of a number of logins for your clients. This can be a time consuming process, but Leo Peysakhovich brings us a way to make this go quickly.   Read more...

Query Analyzer is a great tool for developing SQL code. There are a number of little tricks that can greatly increase the amount of work you can do with very little effort. This article starts looking at some of the features of this tool.   Read more...

This article discusses why VBScript should be one of the tools you use to manage your server. Sample scripts show how to remove files over x days old and how to FTP files.   Read more...

Performing routine database maintenance such as reindexing is important for keeping your databases running at peak performance. When you use INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE statements to modify table data, indexes can become fragmented. Index fragmentation can happen when the logical sequence of pages is disrupted or when an index page contains less than its maximum amount of data, creating a gap in the data page or index. As indexes become fragmented, you get inefficient data reads when accessing tables and slower database performance.   Read more...

Do you use the maintenance plans or hate them? Wish they would do more? Curious about how they work under the hood? Cmon, you gotta read this one! Trust us, it's not another "how-to" article! Well, maybe just a little bit!   Read more...

A look at the page, table, and index structures inside SQL Server.  Read more...

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

Hurricane Charlie had a pretty substantial impact on residents and businesses in Central Florida. Andy lives in the Orlando area and wrote up some notes on the various challenges he ran into it. Out of it you might find a couple things worth thinking about adding into your DR plan.   Read more...

A new article from MSDN magazine on stopping SQL Injection attacks by examining how the SQL can be exploited. It's a good basic article for developers as well as DBAs who might have to review code.  Read more...