Arshad Ali discusses how to use CTE and the ranking function to access or query data from previous or subsequent rows. He also shows you how to leverage the LEAD and LAG analytics functions to achieve the same result without writing a self-join query using CTE and ranking function  Read more...

Fundamentals of SQL Server 2012 Replication provides a hands-on introduction to SQL Server replication. The book introduces you to the technologies that make up replication, and then walks you through setting up different replication scenarios. When you've finished reading, you should be able to implement your own multi-server replication setup while following the principle of least privilege.  Read more...

Fundamentals of SQL Server 2012 Replication provides a hands-on introduction to SQL Server replication. The book introduces you to the technologies that make up replication, and then walks you through setting up different replication scenarios. When you've finished reading, you should be able to implement your own multi-server replication setup while following the principle of least privilege.  Read more...

There were many new DMVs added in SQL Server 2012, and some that have changed since SQL Server 2008 R2. This is a brief overview of the biggest changes and what they mean to you!  Read more...

Fundamentals of SQL Server 2012 Replication provides a hands-on introduction to SQL Server replication. The book introduces you to the technologies that make up replication, and then walks you through setting up different replication scenarios. When you've finished reading, you should be able to implement your own multi-server replication setup while following the principle of least privilege.  Read more...

Fundamentals of SQL Server 2012 Replication provides a hands-on introduction to SQL Server replication. The book introduces you to the technologies that make up replication, and then walks you through setting up different replication scenarios. When you've finished reading, you should be able to implement your own multi-server replication setup while following the principle of least privilege.  Read more...

Exploring the potential benefits of the T-SQL Window functions (OVER, LAG, and LEAD) in this piece. You can learn how to achieve up to 50% performance boost by replacing a single function call.   Read more...

Fundamentals of SQL Server 2012 Replication provides a hands-on introduction to SQL Server replication. The book introduces you to the technologies that make up replication, and then walks you through setting up different replication scenarios. When you've finished reading, you should be able to implement your own multi-server replication setup while following the principle of least privilege.  Read more...

SQL Server expert Wayne Sheffield looks into the new T-SQL analytic functions coming in SQL Server 2012.  Read more...

If you are planning on taking the Microsoft Certification Exam for 70-462, this guide provides the step-by-step instructions to completely setup your Hyper-V lab environment used in the official training kit.  Read more...

While AlwaysOn and Columnar lookup are good enough reasons to migrate to SQL Server 2012, you need to be aware of the problems associated with certain virtualize environments.   Read more...

SQL Server Performance Dashboard comprises a set of custom reports that give you nitty gritty details about the performance of your SQL Server instance.  Read more...

Read when you search for help on the internet. You might miss a very important part of what you must do.  Read more...

There are plenty of occasions when it makes a lot of sense to do backup and restore scripts in PowerShell. Microsoft have put effort into making it much easier, as Allen White demonstrates.  Read more...

This document evaluates the latest functionality provided by Microsoft SQL Server 2012 With Power View for Multidimensional Models[1], this SQL Server 2012 CTP release allows connections between Power View and Multidimensional Models ( cubes) and not just Tabular Models.  Read more...

SQL Server 2012 makes your database maintenance jobs easy by proving an effective Maintenance Plan Wizard. This wizard does a fair job of creating core maintenance plans for your database.  Read more...

Marcin Policht explores some of PowerShell's SSIS-specific automation capabilities by demonstrating the process of configuring an already deployed package in order to carry out a parameterized package execution.  Read more...

Are many people upgrading to SQL Server 2012? Is it worth the cost for your company for any existing instances? Steve Jones asks the question this week.  Read more...

A list of the builds of SQL Server 2012 through SP2 CU13 and SP3 CU4.  Read more...

With SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn Availability Groups, you can configure read-only routing and to automatically redirect the read-only workloads to a secondary replica after a failover. Can this be done using Windows PowerShell?  Read more...