They are new to SQL Server in 2005, but they are not necessarily in common use for many people. New author Kirk Kuykendall brings us a basic look on what a CTE is and how you can use it.  Read more...

How you use dynamic SQL, when you should - and when you should not.   Read more...

Learn how to use SQL Server PerfMon counters to track Windows memory. SQL Server MVP Kevin Kline explains the maximum numbers to watch for when using PerfMon memory counters.  Read more...

That’s correct. SQL Server 2005 SP2 supports data compression using Vardecimal data type.  Read more...

In this article, we will explore another variation of this mechanism, called Web Synchronization, with SQL Server 2005 Express Edition instances operating as merge replication subscribers connecting to a publisher via HTTPS protocol.  Read more...

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

This paper describes the Fuzzy Lookup and Fuzzy Grouping transformations that are part of SQL Server 2005 Integration Services (SSIS). These SSIS transformations are useful for improving the data quality of existing data as well as new data that is being loaded into your database.  Read more...

With SQL Server 2005 recently released, one of the things that many people are looking for are some guidelines for working with the new product. New author Nanda Kishore brings us a list of best practices that should give you a start.   Read more...

Understanding different types of failovers/Role Switching and How do they internally work in database mirroring.  Read more...

SQL Server expert Jeff Moden discusses a common problem seen in many update statements.  Read more...

Discover how to use metadata for pooling information already resident in an application to create a flexible search interface that reduces complexity and increases users' productivity.  Read more...

This article will show you how to use the sys.dm_exec_cached_plans DMV to monitor the performance of stored procedures  Read more...

One common problem in querying is to reference the previous row in a data set as part of a calculation. David McKinney brings us an interesting solution using SQL Server 2005.  Read more...

The Data Generator Source is now available for SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008. This component needs little explanation. It generates random integer (DT_I4) and string (DT_WSTR) data and places them in the pipeline.   Read more...

The next installment of Jacob Sebastian's great series on XML looks at how a .NET application might consume XML data returned from SQL Server.  Read more...

When designing a database, we sometimes come across situations where there are multiple types of entities that we are modeling, but we'd like them to all have certain attributes or relations in common. Using "sub-type" tables is a simple way to implement table inheritance in SQL Server.  Read more...

When is it okay to let SQL Server to make a statistic for columns in your queries, and when should you take those statistics and make an index out of them? What I do is to test all of my procs, and if they generate system statistics (_WA_SYS%), then I add an index to the table for the column in the statistic. But is this a good practice?  Read more...

Several methods on how to pass an array of values from a client to SQL Server, and performance data about the methods.  Read more...

In this article Dinesh Priyankara describes how schema comparison can be performed using Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals.  Read more...

This article will give a basic introduction of Custom Report Item in SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services.  Read more...