Make the ad-hoc analysis of identifying potentially double-counted or sign-reversed Accounting transactions simple and painless.  Read more...

It is frustrating when you hit 'submit' and you get the hourglass big-time. Is it the database to blame? It could be, but there are other suspects that should be considered. Feodor Georgiev describes where, in the long route, to and fro', that a data request makes before returning, that things can get snarled up.  Read more...

Learn the basics of data flow in SSIS with the data pump in this second installment of our series designed to teach you about Integration Services.  Read more...

It should be easy to model a game of poker in SQL. The problem is, however, that you need to model a permutation from a set of elements. Joe Celko argues that using a group of columns to do this isn't necessarily a violation of 1NF, since a permutation is atomic. Then comes the second problem: how would you sort such a column-base permutation in order? Sorting columns in SQL?  Read more...

This free ebook from Red Gate Software will take you from the fundamentals of Statistics, Cost Estimation, Index Selection, and the Execution Engine, and guide you through the inner workings of the Query Optimization process, and throws in a pragmatic look at Parameterization and Hints along the way.  Read more...

One of the common problems is dealing with apostrophes in T-SQL. This article examines the challenges of single quotation marks and ends with a short quiz.  Read more...

Partitioning has improved with each new version of SQL Server. From partitioned views in SQL Server 7.0 through partition table parallelism in SQL Server 2008. With SQL Server 2012, we are now allowed to even create up to a 15K partition on a single table.  Read more...

Often times we are tasked with having to programmatically come with a list of durations per SQL Server Agent Job to trend the run times and order the results by date. Unfortunately it's not always easy in the way the data is stored in the system tables in the MSDB database. This tip explains how to use the system tables to get the data into the correct format for dates and job durations.  Read more...

SQL Server Agent is a Microsoft Windows service that allows a DBA to automate administrative tasks. SQL Server Agent can run jobs, monitor SQL Server, and process alerts. The SQL Server Agent service must be running before any jobs scheduled to execute automatically can be run  Read more...

This article will show you how to automatically generate insert, update, and delete procedures for tables in your database  Read more...

The Performance Analysis of Logs tool is a general tool for collecting and analysing log data. With the addition of a template, it becomes an effective way of analysing data from performance counters for SQL Server, in order to diagnose performance problems and capture baseline information.  Read more...

How can you copy dimensions from one SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) Project to another? Are there any options to do so? This tip outlines three approaches for SQL Server BI Professionals who need to copy dimensions from one SSAS project to another.  Read more...

This is a continuation of first article about Data Mining. We will talk about decision trees.  Read more...