The use of bitmasking is usually limited to decoding values in the system views, but it can be useful in other places when you want to save space. New author Lee Everest brings us an introduction to bitmasking and its use in SQL Server 2005.   Read more...

The use of bitmasking is usually limited to decoding values in the system views, but it can be useful in other places when you want to save space. New author Lee Everest brings us an introduction to bitmasking and its use in SQL Server 2005.   Read more...

Testing is an important part of programming and it is no different with SQL Server development. Longtime author Grant Fritchey brings us a look at the new testing features available in Visual Studio 2005.   Read more...

SQL Server does a great job of handling concurrency & ensuring that users can make changes in multi-user systems without conflict. However there are times a strict calling order is needed.   Read more...

Not many people enjoy using Globally Unique Identifiers (GUIDs), partly because they are cumbersome to type and work with for humans. However they fill a need and can provide some interesting benefits. SQL Server expert Andy Warren takes us through what a GUID is and how you can use it easily in your code.   Read more...

Part 1 of a 4 part series about ADO, this is a beginner level article designed to get you started using the ADO connection object. If you haven't used ADO so far, why not see what it's all about?   Read more...

For many of us, working with the identity property allows us to easily generate a sequential series of numbers. But what if you need to generate a sequence according to some pattern, like one that includes the year? New author Asif Sayed brings us a technique and the code for generating a patterned sequence.   Read more...

Robert is our expert on dynamic sql. This week he offers some good hints for planning the contruction of a proc that will use dynamic sql. He also adds some suggestions on how to format the code so that when you return to it later, you can figure out what you were doing!   Read more...

A short but interesting article, the author has figured out a way to create a PDF from a stored procedure without using a third party library.   Read more...

We've had a lot of coverage of dynamic sql (including another great one from Robert Marda later this week) but this one is a little different. Done in a question/answer format, Andy tries to explain to junior developers why dynamic sql is to be avoided, how to do so, what to do when you can't.   Read more...

SQL Server 2000 is an extremely powerful and flexible development platform, but if the users mess up the data, there's nothing you can do. Protecting the integrity sometimes means severely limiting access to users. Roy Carlson brings us a technique using sp_makewebtask that you can easily use to provide users with some data without giving them query access.   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...

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

This is the first article by Steve Jones that examines a programming technique for handling operations that may be too large to run in a single query.   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...

What do your programmers do with nulls? Do they know nullif, isnull, what about the powerful coalesce function? Do they think DBA's look at the world differently? Why, it's all code isn't it?   Read more...

Know anything about bowling? Or writing hard core TSQL? Or test driven development? Even if you don't, this might be a good way to build those skills. Write a stored procedure that can score a bowling game and you might win one of our books and a shirt!   Read more...

Reducing the amount of round trips between a server and client is something that can give you a great boost in performance. David Poole looks at how he solved a problem with HTML checkboxes and the challenges they solve in a programming environment. Without Dynamic SQL!   Read more...

This article shows some options to retrieve all the metadata you'll need to write scripts that write scripts. No, that's not a goof, this article is about code generation.   Read more...

Dinesh ran into a situation where a client had very specific requirements for generating keys. Take a look at the solution, can you better alternatives? Sometimes you just can't talk the client into changing!   Read more...