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...

Continuing with his series on Alias Data Types in SQL Server 2000, Yakov Shmalfman brings us part 5, looking at indexes.  Read more...

Have you ever misconfigured your SQL Server's memory and been unable to start it? That happened to new author Jay Dave, who has the Data Center edition of SQL Server 2000 with a whopping 36GB of RAM. Here's how to get your instance back up and running.   Read more...

SQL injection has been a hot topic the last couple years and there are some great articles at SQLServerCentral.com on this topic. Michael Coles brings us an updated look at this SQL Server security issue with some new examples you might not have previously thought.   Read more...

While SQL Server Integration Services is a huge improvement in the ETL capabilities of SQL Server, there are quite a few environments still using DTS in SQL Server 2000. Wayne Fillis brings us a method for implementing conditional logic in your packages.   Read more...

An interesting tale of David Bird's fight with tempdb.  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...

Keeping track of your DDL is something that is critical and some sort of VCS system should be used. However pulling out your scripts from SQL Server sometimes entails a bit more than the standard scripting. New author Richard Sutherland brings us an open source project that can help you get this done. Complete with code.   Read more...

SQL Server 2005 includes an amazing ETL environment in Integration Services, but many DBAs will be using DTS and SQL Server 2000 for years to come. Jambu Krishnamurthy brings us a few handy examples of how you can customize your DTS environment.   Read more...

This article by Chris Kempster shows you how to quickly move a database by detaching or taking a database offline.   Read more...

One DBA's tale of how to monitor jobs for failure and ensure that the DBA is alerted to the fact that there is a problem. (from Feb 2008)  Read more...

In this next article of the SQL Server in the Enterprise Series, we'll explore how to cluster Windows 2000 and SQL Server 2000 in a step-by-step manner. After this article, you should be able to cluster a SQL Server 2000 machine for failover availability in an Active/Active cluster.   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...

As a SQL Server DBA you should know that your code is stored in syscomments by default. While most DBAs use version control systems, there are times you might want to look through the code on the server for comparison purposes. Robert Cary brings us an article on how you can do this in 2000 and 2005.   Read more...

When loading a data warehouse, handling the ETL process of working with files can be problematic. Longtime DBA Janet Wong brings us an interesting solution that is flexible and efficient for quickly loading a number of files into a warehouse using DTS.   Read more...

While SQL Server 2005 is greatly changing the paradigm of ETL with Integration Services, SQL Server 2000 and DTS will be here for some time to come. New author Rama Nageshwara brings us an overview of this fantastic data movement toolset.   Read more...

Using hints in a query is something that most DBAs don't ever seem to bother with, but when they do, NOLOCK seems to be their hint of choice. Wayne Fillis brings us a detailed examination of how this particular hint actually affects the performance of your system.   Read more...

While SSIS is taking the SQL Server 2005 world by storm, there are many DBAs still working with SQL Server 2000 and its ETL system: DTS. In this article, Jambu Krishnamurthy shows us how to modify the exception handling in a DTS package to get around the limitations of the designer.   Read more...

Most DBAs are constantly looking for ways to tune their servers to run better. Joe Doherty brings us the second part of his series on indexes with an in depth look at how the indexes are stored in your database.   Read more...

Monitoring your servers for issues and alerts is something every DBA should be doing on a regular basis. However even with a small number of servers, a DBA can easily be overwhelmed if some level of automation is not implemented. Thomas LaRock brings us a method of scanning your error logs automatically and notifying the DBA of problems.   Read more...