Accessing your SQL Server without Enterprise Manager or Management Studio can be a difficult task without a custom application. Especially if you are not in the office. Jacob Sebastian brings us an open source application that can make this much easier for DBAs.   Read more...

This is a product that we have not heard much about, but Microsoft has a Data Protection Manager, designed to help ensure you can recover your databases by centralizing your backup files. Author Jay Dave brings us a short overview on this product.   Read more...

Reporting is a huge part of any DBA's job with constant changes and new requests for data that non-technical people can use. And more and more often the format of choice is PDF, which ensures the end result looks the same on many different platforms. Kathi Kellenberger takes a look at a product that can allow end-users to generate PDFs from a database and easily send them to other people.   Read more...

Have you ever wanted to read your transaction log? Wonder what information is inside there? New author S. Srivathsani takes a look at one of the log tools out on the market, Lumigent's Log Explorer.   Read more...

Performance tuning is an art or science, depending on who you talk to. SQL Server guru Joe Sack has authored a book on SQL Server 2005 T-SQL and brings us the performance tuning chapter as a preview.   Read more...

Take a look at a sample chapter and see who won copies of this book from our Question of the Day Contest.   Read more...

Highwire Development is offering a free version of their RAAS product to SQLServerCentral.com members.   Read more...

Danny Gould has written a very interesting piece of software that gives you a view into the storage of your data inside SQL Server. And it's FREE!!! He brings us a description of this software in this short article.   Read more...

Andy Warren has had a great deal of experience with SQL Server replication and just picked up a new book on the topic. Rather than the standard book review, he decided to conduct the review as an interview with the author.   Read more...

A new Java based application for searching SQL Server and Sybase databases is available for free from SQLMesh.   Read more...

Software Development Innovations is offering SQLServerCentral.com members a 20% discount on their products with a coupon of "sqlservercentral" used in their cart.  Read more...

XML is becoming more pervasive in all of MIcrosoft's product, including SQL Server. Jay Dave brings us a short look at how one of their lesser known tools, the XML Notepad, can be used by SQL Server DBAs.   Read more...

All of us would like to code faster and with fewer mistakes. While a third party tool usualy won't help with the latter, there are a few to help you increase the speed at which you build readable code. New author Tom Fisher brings us a short tutorial on using a couple of Red Gate's tools.   Read more...

Accessing your SQL Server without Enterprise Manager or Management Studio can be a difficult task without a custom application. Especially if you are not in the office. Jacob Sebastian brings us an open source application that can make this much easier for DBAs.   Read more...

Red Gate is looking to expand upon their ever-growing list of extremely helpful tools and asking for help from you DBAs out the real world. They have a survey with 20 questions on Security Tools and 5 people will be chosen to win a goodie bag. I have no idea what's in the bag, but it should be interesting.  Read more...

Working in the corporate world can be a challenge and most of us muddle through our careers without really having any formal training. Andy Warren has spent time proactively working on his career and learned a great many tips and tricks for succeeeding as an employee and a manager. He brings us a few book reviews that might help you cope with the strange corporate world in which so many of us work.   Read more...

This is a product that we have not heard much about, but Microsoft has a Data Protection Manager, designed to help ensure you can recover your databases by centralizing your backup files. Author Jay Dave brings us a short overview on this product.   Read more...

Longtime author here, Michael Coles, has written a new book on SQL Server 2005 Programming and has sent us a sample chapter on SQLCLR programming. Download the chapter and source code and grab this great book from your favorite bookseller.   Read more...

There have been a huge number of SQL Server 2005 books released in the last year, but which ones are worth buying? Here are reviews of three new books from one of the SQL Server gurus.   Read more...

Longtime author Dinesh Asanka takes a look at one of the new tools on the market, SQL Refactor from Red Gate.   Read more...

Danny Gould has written a very interesting piece of software that gives you a view into the storage of your data inside SQL Server. And it's FREE!!! He brings us a description of this software in this short article.   Read more...

All of us would like to code faster and with fewer mistakes. While a third party tool usualy won't help with the latter, there are a few to help you increase the speed at which you build readable code. New author Tom Fisher brings us a short tutorial on using a couple of Red Gate's tools.   Read more...

Highwire Development is offering a free version of their RAAS product to SQLServerCentral.com members.   Read more...