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...

Have you ever received an XML file from someone to import into SQL Server? It's not as easy as you might expect, especially in SQL Server 2000. New author Steve Moore brings us an article and code on how to do just that.   Read more...

SQL Server 2008 is well on its way to being complete and released with the release of the second CTP recently. There aren't a tremendous number of changes, but one of the more interesting ones is the changes to date and time handling in this new platform. The time and date datatypes have been separated and longtime SQL Server author Vincent Rainardi brings us a short look at how there can be used.  Read more...

Another little bit of career advice, this time from longtime author Jeffrey Yao who gives you some pointeres on what you should know for your next job interview.   Read more...

Continuing on with a look at SQL Server 205 partitioning features, Andy Warren delves into archiving techniques.   Read more...

SQL Server guru Andy Warren brings us a list of things that he considers when things go wrong. Read about some of the common sense approaches to solving performance and other problems.   Read more...

The Sarbanes-Oxley act has drastically changed the jobs of many DBAs with the audit and reporting requirements this act entails. Brandie Tarvin brings us some hints about how you can go about complying with the new requirements.   Read more...

Continuing with his series on professional development, Andy Warren takes a look at funding some of your career growth and why it pays to invest in yourself.   Read more...

As autumn approaches, Patrick Index produces his ten hot chestnuts for IT Contractors like himself, with a jaundiced 'contractor's-eye view'.   Read more...

This article is an excerpt from the forthcoming book, Business Metadata, to be published on or about September, 2007, co-authored by Bill Inmon, Bonnie O’Neil and Lowell Fryman, published by Morgan Kaufman.  Read more...

This article presents a strategy for testing ETL applications that perform data movement and populate data warehouses. It is useful information for the testing community as well as designers and managers charged with planning a data warehousing implementation.  Read more...

EDM solutions are a logical and often necessary complement to operational analytics.  Read more...

Simon Sabin is always cagey about giving advice on the sort of hardware to run SQL Server on, but admits to some general rules.   Read more...

When IT starts to stand for 'Implement This', even the keenest DBA begins to dream of farming Alpacas as a career-change...and we ask our readers how they would have solved the DBA's dilemma.   Read more...

Organizations with mature business intelligence environments can integrate fraud analytics within their current environment to take advantage of processes and architecture that are already in place.   Read more...

Continuing with his series on Alias Data Types, Yakov Shlafman shows us how to work wtih ADTs when constriaints are involved.   Read more...

SQL Server MVP Simon Sabin brings us a very interesting article on a possibilltyfor using enumerated values instead of integer or other coded foreign keys. It is an interesting idea that could go a long way towards making code easier to read.   Read more...

Auditing is something that almost every DBA needs to tackle at some point in his or her career. David McKinney brings a new twist on the solution by using XML and XSL to help implement auditing in your SQL Server application.   Read more...

To run with the pack in terms of performance, productivity, and competition, servers that are long in the tooth have to be put out to pasture regularly. But there might be (and usually is) some life left in these early retirees, and they can still be put to good use.  Read more...

How many cores (or hardware threads) can your code harness to get its answers faster?  Read more...