I recently came across an interesting script to help show index info and usage.  As I began to dissect the script, I noticed that the script was intended for SQL 2005 and beyond but was using SQL 2000 compatibility views.  I decided I would take it upon myself to update… Read more

Recently, we found out that HP Data Protector had an update, and I took for granted that this update would make the product more compatible with SQL Server 2008 - but it still doesn't support SQL Server 2008 without installing the Backwards Compatibility Pack from SQL Server 2005. … Read more

The family returned back from the UK last night, after traveling for something like 14 hours, plus an early morning wake up. I was up at 5am, GMT, for a 9am flight. Got to Denver around 5pm MST, and then it took a couple hours to clear customs, luggage, etc.… Read more

Intel has finally released the long awaited (at least by me) 45nm Xeon 7500 series processor. This beast has eight cores, plus hyper-threading and turbo boost, and 24MB of shared L3 cache. It also supports up to 16 DDR3 memory slots per CPU socket. This would give you 64… Read more

Continuing on from Part 2, I want to continue this time with two points I left open last time:

• How to qualify who gets help in terms of funding to speak
• Whether there is really a speaker shortage

I want to start with the second point. Is there a… Read more

When I wrote my most recent free eBook, Brad’s Sure Guide to SQL Server Maintenance Plans, some of the DBAs I know asked me why I wrote it. After all, “real” DBAs don’t use the Maintenance Plan Wizard/Designer built into SQL Server 2005/2008 Management Studio (SSMS) to maintain their… Read more

Excerpted from Brad’s Sure Guide to SQL Server 2008, which is available as a free eBook.

Previous versions of SQL Server have included a variety of built-in ways to audit activity inside SQL Server. These included:

Login Auditing: Only tracks user login successes and/or failures. Results are… Read more

A few of us have been deliberating and discussing the need for a bridge certification between the MCITP and MCM certifications from Microsoft.  This discussion was brought about due to an editorial by Steve Jones at SQLServerCentral.  As the discussion has progressed I believe there are some good ideas coming… Read more

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With apologies to Timex, I just wanted to relate a minor incident that happened with one of my mirrored databases last night. This database needed to grow its primary data file, and the autogrow amount was set to 5GB ( I have Windows Instant File Initialization enabled). Unfortunately, there was… Read more

So the other day I posted, Slipstream - Makes installs simple, and this afternoon I needed to do a SQL Server 2008 Standard install to get an evaluation environment of Team Foundation Server 2010 installed.

Well, I didn't follow my own advice.  I figured I had some good reasons: Read more

Today I discovered, from a post on the forums and a follow up dig into BOL that sp_change_users_login is to be depreciated in future versions of SQL Server and the new ALTER USER should be used instead.  Now let me make it clear here, sp_change_users_login is still available in SQL… Read more

Instructables has a Paracord contest going that requires some portion of a project include paracord (often referred to as 550 cord for the breaking strength of 550 lbs. I don’t have a good idea yet, hoping one appears before the April 11 submission deadline. Thought I’d share, most of us… Read more

I had bigger plans for this series than what has transpired. I think that is a testament as to how things can rapidly change or other events can change your plans. The first thing that changed my plans for this series was the advent of a competition on ask.sqlservercentral.com centered… Read more

Have you been looking for a way to measure report performance?  Want to know who accesses your reports most frequently?  Well there are some free reports on http://msftrsprodsamples.codeplex.com/ that you may already have downloaded and don’t realize it that contains this information. 

When you download the AdventureWorks…

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I’ve long admired the value that I get from Wikipedia and like the concept of crowd sourcing knowledge, just never seemed to get around to setting one up. Finally decided to do it as a way to accelerate the SQLSaturday documentation, and I’ve set it up at http://wiki.sqlsaturday.com.

I… Read more

The MacGyver meme is making the rounds and I was kindly tagged by my buddy, Thomas LaRock ( blog | twitter) – that most famous SQLRockstar, who wisely chose to tag me early in the process, lest he receive another round of disciplining like the last time.… Read more

I was recently working on building a test environment for myself while I was studying for the MCITP-Database Administration exams.  SQL Server 2008 supports creating a slipstream install for service packs and cumulative updates so you can install to the latest SP or cumulative update in one step.

The problem… Read more

I have seen many forum posts asking how do you schedule backups for SQL Express databases and the answers always have similar responses that go something like:

“There is no SQL agent in Express…the only way to backup databases on a schedule is to write a script and call it… Read more

Indexes are the objects that DBA uses them everyday and maintaining them very often, during the maintenance routines. The main purpose that we use the indexes is to retrieve data as fast as it possible.

Types of indexes are:

Cluster  - max 1 per table & more about the… Read more