As much as we're SQL Server folks here, sometimes we do need to connect to other data stores. Hai shares some of his experiences doing so. Might come in handy someday.   Read more...

Are you taking care of yourself as an IT professional? We try to cover all aspects of your SQL Server career here, not just the technical stuff. Longtime SQL Server guru Michael Coles brings us some health tips in an interview with Dr. Jerry Sanders   Read more...

Most of us DBAs have worked on our career to get where we are. A DBA is usually a second or third step in IT and we we've looked to advance our understanding of technology. Jeffrey Yao now brings us a new level of database work to which we may aspire.   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...

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...

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...

Everyone has a set of handy utilities and tools that they use with their SQL Server, but sometimes convincing an employer to purchase tools is hard. Longtime DBA David Bird brings us a list of the tools he likes to use and are FREE.   Read more...

What is the fastest way to update a newly created column in a large table? New author Bimal Fernando brings us a look at a technique he uses for just this situation.   Read more...

Dice.com recently completed a salary survey for 2007. If you didn't participate, Steve Jones summarizes the results for DBAs.   Read more...

Importing data files is always a challenge for a DBA, especially when the files might vary in format. Having one codebase is important and new author Mark Balasundram brings us the template for a high performance application to do just that.   Read more...

SQL Server 2005 has greatly expanded the XML capabilities of this platform, but should you use it in your database? New author and MVP Simon Munro brings us a look at how he has used XML and where it might fit in your database.   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...

As a SQL Server DBA or developer, how do you measure the success of your projects? What about your users? Here is an interesting look by Janet Wong at a few of her projects and how their success was perceived. See if any of your experiences are similar.   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...

When automating administrative actions for SQL Server, there are a number of ways to handle the workflow. Longtime SQL Server DBA Roy Carlson brings us a technique for using a text file as input to the standard SQL Server tools.   Read more...

Computer professionals are constantly complaining about the documentation for the software they use. And are notorious for not documenting their own code very well. Longtime author Raj Vasant brings us a short article with some suggestions on how to go about documenting your databases.   Read more...

What makes a good manager? In response to a recent thread, Janet Wong takes us through some of the good and bad managers she's had during her career and talks about the problems today with technical managers.   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...

We often see ways to improve your career, but there's a flip side as well. In the spirit of our "worst practices" series, Steve Jones takes a look at ten skills that could cost you your job if you can't perform them.   Read more...

The battle between developers and DBAs can be a rough one at times. However DBAs are often outnumbered by developers and need to be sure they fit in. DBA Janet Wong brings us one of her experiences about how you can better go with the flow.   Read more...

Everyone has a set of handy utilities and tools that they use with their SQL Server, but sometimes convincing an employer to purchase tools is hard. Longtime DBA David Bird brings us a list of the tools he likes to use and are FREE.   Read more...

We often see ways to improve your career, but there's a flip side as well. In the spirit of our "worst practices" series, Steve Jones takes a look at ten skills that could cost you your job if you can't perform them.   Read more...

Continuing with his series on XML in SQL Server 2005, Jacob Sebastian brings us a number of examples on how to work with XML in different situations with SQL Server 2005.   Read more...