SQL Server and Access are usually linked together as Access used for applications at the beginning of their lifecycle that are later moved to SQL Server when the load gets too high or the data sizes grow. There are often cases where you may also want to use SQL Server as a backend to an Access application. But how do you get your data from Access to SQL Server? Author Dinesh Asanka brings us an overview of the various ways that you can move your Access database to 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...

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...

Are you familiar with using the Command object in ADO? If so, migrating to ADO.NET should be a snap.   Read more...

Oracle is usually a dirty word in the SQL Server community, but like it or not, lots of data resides in Oracle databases. And SQL Server is often used to gather this data together in a warehouse of some sort for spinning cubes, generating reports, etc. Haidong Ji looks at the various methods that you can connect to an Oracle driver and compares the speed of each. If you need to get data from Oracle, or may need to, this is the place you want to start.   Read more...

We saw a note from Chad about a tool he wrote in the forums and asked him to write up some notes. Not only did we get notes, we got the source code! See what a DBA can do with some DMO.   Read more...

So you've created a SQL Server package and now you're ready to integrate it into your Visual Basic application? In this series, Brian Knight will show you how to use the DTS object model to execute a DTS package from Visual Basic.   Read more...

Joseph gathered together some various bits of code and came up with a solution that lets you do RC4 encryption via the sp_oa~ procedures.   Read more...

As Chris points out, in most applications these days you end up having to go with optimistic locking, which presents a few challenges. Chris works through the list of options. If you're building web/disconnected apps and need anything besides last update wins, this one is for you.   Read more...

This is one of the vendors we met at PASS 2003. Their new driver is supposed to be faster than the driver provided by Microsoft AND supports NT authentication. Link takes you to a comparision chart of features. (Not Reviewed)  Read more...

Part two in the Introduction to ADO series, this beginner level article shows how to open a recordset, how to add and edit records, and touches lightly on how to select the best cursor type and locking mode. Good code samples help you get started fast!   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...

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...

Another product review! Chris put AdeptSQL (a schema comparison and sync product) to work and wrote up the results. This article also includes some feedback from the vendor that is worth reading.   Read more...

This article by Jon Winer offers some tips to help you get the most of SQL Full Text Search.   Read more...

DTS logging is a pretty handy feature - if you've got it enabled. Got lots of packages and want to turn it on for all of them? Thats a lot of point and click using EM, but with the code Haidong has put together, it's a snap. Other possibilities to this code as well. After all, it uses a DTS package to modify other DTS packages.   Read more...

The second article in a 3 part series that presents another VBScript class file that creates a class that can be used to display the backup information from a SQL server's maintanence plans.   Read more...

Andy returns to the Worst Practice series this week with a short article looking at how connection strings in applications affect what you see in sysprocesses. Perhaps less controversial (in our opinion) that some of the other worst practices, this is something easy to fix and definitely worth fixing! Read the article and post a comment - explore other points of view! Readers posting a comment will be entered in a drawing for a copy of the SQL Server 2000 Resource Kit.   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...

Integrate high performance index- and search functionality in your SQL database. Essentially, IMP Index Manager is a set of tools (search engine, administrative interface, etc.) to make it very easy to add search engine capabilities to SQL Server 2000. Easy to implement, and lightening fast performance. (Not Reviewed)   Read more...