Back in April Steve Jones wrote up a disaster at work. Andy had one this week and wrote up the story too. Copy cat! Pretty soon everyone will be having a disaster and writing a story about it! Give these guys credit for letting you see what happens when it ALL goes bad. Disaster recovery is hard to sell and hard to do, reading the article might give you an idea that will save you some time and/or data one day.   Read more...

A list of builds and versions for SQL Server 7.  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...

From monitoring e-mail messages to distributing reports for users, SQL Server's database mail proves quite useful. Learn how to use it in SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005/2008.   Read more...

When writing SQL, picking good tables aliases can greatly enhance the readability of your code  Read more...

SQL 2000 SP4 failure on Cluster with error:Setup failed to perform required operations on the cluster nodes  Read more...

How to Extract Error Description in SQL Server 2000 based on Error Number  Read more...

Yan Pan explains how to set up proxies in SQL Server 2000, 2005 and 2008, and compares the differences between them  Read more...

This article introduces the PerlDTS project that provides a Perl distribution to access and execute MS SQL Server 8 DTS packages.  Read more...

Attending a conference and hearing about all the latest and greatest new features is a bit like spending holiday sampling exotic seafood and imbibing strange new cocktails. When you return, you're decidedly in the mood for a pie and a pint of beer.  Read more...

Compare Dates in an iterative manner for a particular set of records in a single query using SQL Server 2000  Read more...

Sizing a database can be one of the most arduous tasks a DBA, analyst or developer must attend to. It?s time consuming and more hours go into analyzing the database than actually sizing it. This article focuses on how to monitor the database?s growth after its deployed and contains some tips on how to size it before deployment. We will also dive a little into how to benchmark your database against a robust data load.   Read more...

Application roles often interesting possibilities in theory. In practice? Brian explores how they work and some of the pros/cons you should consider before selecting them for use in your applications.   Read more...

This is a follow up to the article "Return Query Text Along With sp_who2 Using Dynamic Management Views".  Read more...

Building high performance applications with SQL Server can be a challenge if you do not understand how the query processor works and how the server uses indexes. SQL Server expert Randy Dyess brings a look at how bookmark lookups are used when satisfying a query and how this can impact the performance of your query.   Read more...

SQL Server high availability. Log shipping or replication, clustering or some other solution. It's a challenge and as companies grow more dependent on their databases, it's one that more and more DBAs face everyday. Paul Ibison has taken a look at how log shipping and replication can be compared in the quest for high availability.   Read more...

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...

SQL Server MVP Jacob Sebastian continues his very successful XML series with a foray into SQL Server 2000's XML capabilities for generating custom documents.  Read more...

In this article Randy Dyness shows you how to avoid temp tables whenever to maximize the performance of your queries.   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...