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...

How do you easily copy DTS packages from one server to another? DTS, BCP, T-SQL? Are there advantages to using one method over another? Andy did some research - read the article and see what works and what doesn't!   Read more...

Article number four in this popular series continues exposing Worst Practices! This week Andy continues his tirade by talking about why case sensitive databases should be BANNED from the planet. Is he right or just OUT OF CONTROL? Read the article and join the discussion - your comment may lead to an article, that's what generated this one!   Read more...

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

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...

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...

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...

The first part of this series provides a road map for a very cool application using an under-utilized companion of the SQL Server 2000 database platform.   Read more...

The challenge for Robert Marda was to devise a way to keep the data available at all times while importing the new data, detect if a full or daily update was received and run appropriate data pumps, put in sufficient fail safes to ensure bad data would not get imported, and to make the process automatic including notification to pagers upon failure. Robert shows you how he did it here.   Read more...

Andy takes a look at the new book on DMO and likes what he sees - "great book for beginner and intermediate DMO users!". We've been supporters of DMO for a while and we're glad to see a new book on the subject. Read the review, add your comments, buy the book!   Read more...

Following up on a question posted in our discussion area, Andy demonstrates how to backup/restore a database using DMO, how to get the list of files to be restored, and how to do a restore with no recovery. Lots of sample code!   Read more...

Following up on a question posted in our discussion area, Andy looks at how to use DMO to add and remove linked servers. Along the way he points out a couple 'gotchas' and throws in a cool tip about how to save a little time when you experiment with DMO.   Read more...

Programmers can most commonly relate to interface-based programming in their programming language. This is harder to accomplish in SQL Server though. In this article by Chris Cubley, he shows you how to build interfaced-based SQL.   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...

How do you easily copy DTS packages from one server to another? DTS, BCP, T-SQL? Are there advantages to using one method over another? Andy did some research - read the article and see what works and what doesn't!   Read more...

This week Andy continues his series on how to reduce the number of round trips to the server by looking at some things you can easily add to your applications without a lot of rearchitecting.   Read more...

Architectural choices for data access affect performance, scalability, maintainability, and usability. This article focuses on the performance aspects of these choices by comparing relative performance of various data access techniques, including Microsoft® ADO.NET Command, DataReader, DataSet, and XML Reader in common application scenarios with a Microsoft SQL Server™ 2000 database.  Read more...

One of our readers needed some help with altering a table with DMO, so Andy has a code sample and some comments in general about how to add objects using DMO. It's good code and a very quick introduction to how objects work. Worth reading!   Read more...