Planning for disaster recovery and business continuity aren't amongst the most exciting IT activities. They are, however, essential and relevant to any Database Administrator who is responsible for the safety and integrity of the companies' data, since data is a key part of business continuity.  Read more...

This week we highlight the practice of being prepared for disasters at SQLServerCentral.  Read more...

Author Craig Outcalt gives advice on preparing for the worst with a look at what you should consider putting in your disaster recovery plan and why.  Read more...

This paper provides a foundation for understanding data replication as well as a discussion of the criteria for selecting an appropriate replication technology.   Read more...

The Query Optimiser needs a good estimate of the number of rows likely to be returned by each physical operator in order to select the best query plan from the most likely alternatives. Sometimes these estimates can go so wildly wrong as to result in a very slow query. Joe Sack shows how it can happen with SQL Queries on a data warehouse with a star schema.  Read more...

Bill Pearson, business intelligence architect and author, exposes the DAX COUNTROWS() and FILTER() functions, while generally exploring, comparing and contrasting the nature and operation of calculated columns and calculated measures, in the second Level of our Stairway to PowerPivot and DAX series.  Read more...

Occasionally, when deploying a database, you need to copy data out to file from all the tables in a database. Phil Factor shows how to do it, and illustrates its use by copying an entire database from one server to another.  Read more...

Red Gate won 8 awards in the recent SQL Server Pro annual product reviews. As a celebration, we're giving away a few prizes.  Read more...

Learn how yo can use a SQL-CLR procedure to handle all your PIVOT queries.  Read more...

SQL Server 2012 Integration Services offers a wide range of powerful features that allow you to streamline and automate tasks involving data extraction, transformation, and loading. However, incorporating these features into your existing business intelligence framework frequently necessitates additional security measures ensuring that data which is being processed remains protected from unauthorized access.  Read more...

I have a requirement to add the Log Shipping Monitor for an existing installation. I have heard you can only complete this by rebuilding the Log Shipping infrastructure. Is that true? Are there any other options? In this tip I will explain how we can add the Log Shipping monitor to a SQL Server 2005, 2008, 2008 R2 or 2012 environment without rebuilding the Log Shipping installation.  Read more...

As part of the LAMP stack, MySQL is incredibly important for providing a reliable and platform-agnostic database platform for web development. This level looks at the syntax of MySQL and how to best port SQL code to a MySQL environment.  Read more...

Get a free ebook from Red Gate Software and SQLServerCentral from MVP Grant Fritchey. Learn how to read and interpret execution plans.  Read more...

Instructions on how to set up the connection string and SSIS package to allow a 64 bit server to export to a 32 bit version of Excel  Read more...

With Report Builder and SSMS, there isn't much you can't do in the way of the common reports and visualisations. One of the more interesting visualisations uses maps, and that, combined with layers, makes for an impressive way of representing data.  Read more...

I have to support a third party application that periodically creates a new database on the fly. This obviously causes issues with our backup mechanisms. The databases have a particular pattern for naming, so I can identify the set of databases, however, I need to make sure I'm always backing up the newest one. Read this tip to ensure you are backing up your latest database in a series.  Read more...

A free day of training in the US nation's capital. Come join in if you are nearby.  Read more...

How to reset an identity field to the next contiguous value, after deletions.  Read more...