The second of a series by Paul White examining the APPLY operator. In this section learn how this operator compares with joins and about both the cross and outer options.  Read more...

The first of a two-part series of articles examining the APPLY operator. Learn the basics of how this operator works and how it can help you solve some tricky problems.  Read more...

Simplified explanation of whats and hows of Service Brokers  Read more...

This article describes my experience in upgrading a four node cluster with three active instances to SQL 2008  Read more...

This article covers the use of the TOP clause to select data from a table based on the TOP n columns in a table.  Read more...

This paper describes how to identify and resolve spinlock contention issues observed when running SQL Server 2008 applications on high concurrency systems with certain workloads.  Read more...

The list of builds for SQL Server 2008 updated SP3.  Read more...

There are numerous circumstances when we wish to add a custom function to a SSRS report in order to cater for needs of the customer which exceeds the capability of the built-in functions in SSRS. In these scenarios we will have to write our own functions. In this article you will see how to add custom code to SSRS.  Read more...

The primary purpose of SQL Server 2008 Integration Services is to deliver extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) functionality that supports core features of the SQL Server database management system. However, there are numerous scenarios where its role involves interaction with components that provide business intelligence-related features incorporated into the product.  Read more...

Using change tracking in SQL Server 2008 to aid in database refactoring within an OLTP system.  Read more...

Find out what you need to learn for the SQL Server 2008 Administration certification exams.  Read more...

Microsoft Access is a very good database solution, but it has limits. While the portability of mdb and accdb files is convenient, there are advantages to moving to the less portable SQL Server solution. If you do have SQL Server, there's very little reason not to consider migrating your Access Databases. Not all custom-made Access applications easily lend themselves to a SQL Server solution so you'll need to do some analysis before choosing a migration path.  Read more...

The list of builds for SQL Server 2008 updated SP3.  Read more...

Table Value Constructors (TVCs) are a useful feature of 2008, allowing you to specify tables of values and expressions. Users who are stuck with previous versions of SQL Server can play along, since Rob Sheldon demonstrates that there have always been ways of doing this in SQL Server, though less elegantly.  Read more...

In SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 R2, the number of partitions on tables and indexes is limited to 1,000. This paper discusses how SQL Server 2008 SP2 and SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 address this limitation by providing an option to increase the limit to 15,000 partitions. It describes how support for 15,000 partitions can be enabled and disabled on a database. It also talks about performance characteristics, certain limitations associated with this support, known issues, and their workarounds. This support is targeted to enterprise customers and ISVs with large-scale decision support or data warehouse requirements.  Read more...

SQL 2008 has some key improvements over SQL 2005. This article deals with backup compression and faster backups in SQL 2008  Read more...

Gain an insight into how to use your SQL Server cluster for more than just high availibility in this article from Mark Jones.  Read more...

If you make the decision to upgrade to 2008, there are a number of tools that make the process easier, but you still need to understand what things you should consider. We have a new article from Arshad Ali to help you understand the process and what you should consider.  Read more...

The list of builds for SQL Server 2008 updated SP3.  Read more...

Robert Pearl brings us a few more potential SQL Server 2008 installation issues on Windows 7 and a few workarounds that might help you get around them.  Read more...