Sizing a database can be one of the most arduous tasks a DBA, analyst or developer must attend to. It?s time consuming and more hours go into analyzing the database than actually sizing it. This article focuses on how to monitor the database?s growth after its deployed and contains some tips on how to size it before deployment. We will also dive a little into how to benchmark your database against a robust data load.   Read more...

Application roles often interesting possibilities in theory. In practice? Brian explores how they work and some of the pros/cons you should consider before selecting them for use in your applications.   Read more...

Building high performance applications with SQL Server can be a challenge if you do not understand how the query processor works and how the server uses indexes. SQL Server expert Randy Dyess brings a look at how bookmark lookups are used when satisfying a query and how this can impact the performance of your query.   Read more...

SQL Server high availability. Log shipping or replication, clustering or some other solution. It's a challenge and as companies grow more dependent on their databases, it's one that more and more DBAs face everyday. Paul Ibison has taken a look at how log shipping and replication can be compared in the quest for high availability.   Read more...

As much as we're SQL Server folks here, sometimes we do need to connect to other data stores. Hai shares some of his experiences doing so. Might come in handy someday.   Read more...

In this article Randy Dyness shows you how to avoid temp tables whenever to maximize the performance of your queries.   Read more...

Two weeks ago Andy started his wildly successful series on Worst Practices. This week he continues that series discussing why failing to use primary keys and clustered indexes are worst practices. Agree or disagree, read the article and join the discussion. One thing you'll have to admit, reading an article by Andy is a lot more interesting than reading Books Online!   Read more...

Free SQL Server 2000 Encryption for your data!!! Author Michael Coles has put together a tolljit and some XPs that you can use to encrypt your data with the Blowfish algorithm. It is hard to write good applications that encrpyt data and manage the keys and security. This will give you a great headstart on protecting your data.   Read more...

Have you ever misconfigured your SQL Server's memory and been unable to start it? That happened to new author Jay Dave, who has the Data Center edition of SQL Server 2000 with a whopping 36GB of RAM. Here's how to get your instance back up and running.   Read more...

SQL injection has been a hot topic the last couple years and there are some great articles at SQLServerCentral.com on this topic. Michael Coles brings us an updated look at this SQL Server security issue with some new examples you might not have previously thought.   Read more...

While SQL Server Integration Services is a huge improvement in the ETL capabilities of SQL Server, there are quite a few environments still using DTS in SQL Server 2000. Wayne Fillis brings us a method for implementing conditional logic in your packages.   Read more...

This article discusses why VBScript should be one of the tools you use to manage your server. Sample scripts show how to remove files over x days old and how to FTP files.   Read more...

Keeping track of your DDL is something that is critical and some sort of VCS system should be used. However pulling out your scripts from SQL Server sometimes entails a bit more than the standard scripting. New author Richard Sutherland brings us an open source project that can help you get this done. Complete with code.   Read more...

SQL Server 2005 includes an amazing ETL environment in Integration Services, but many DBAs will be using DTS and SQL Server 2000 for years to come. Jambu Krishnamurthy brings us a few handy examples of how you can customize your DTS environment.   Read more...

This article by Chris Kempster shows you how to quickly move a database by detaching or taking a database offline.   Read more...

In this next article of the SQL Server in the Enterprise Series, we'll explore how to cluster Windows 2000 and SQL Server 2000 in a step-by-step manner. After this article, you should be able to cluster a SQL Server 2000 machine for failover availability in an Active/Active cluster.   Read more...

When automating administrative actions for SQL Server, there are a number of ways to handle the workflow. Longtime SQL Server DBA Roy Carlson brings us a technique for using a text file as input to the standard SQL Server tools.   Read more...

As a SQL Server DBA you should know that your code is stored in syscomments by default. While most DBAs use version control systems, there are times you might want to look through the code on the server for comparison purposes. Robert Cary brings us an article on how you can do this in 2000 and 2005.   Read more...

When loading a data warehouse, handling the ETL process of working with files can be problematic. Longtime DBA Janet Wong brings us an interesting solution that is flexible and efficient for quickly loading a number of files into a warehouse using DTS.   Read more...

While SQL Server 2005 is greatly changing the paradigm of ETL with Integration Services, SQL Server 2000 and DTS will be here for some time to come. New author Rama Nageshwara brings us an overview of this fantastic data movement toolset.   Read more...

Using hints in a query is something that most DBAs don't ever seem to bother with, but when they do, NOLOCK seems to be their hint of choice. Wayne Fillis brings us a detailed examination of how this particular hint actually affects the performance of your system.   Read more...

SQL Server 2005 includes an amazing ETL environment in Integration Services, but many DBAs will be using DTS and SQL Server 2000 for years to come. Jambu Krishnamurthy brings us a few handy examples of how you can customize your DTS environment.   Read more...

While SQL Server's Profiler is a great tool, it can be hard to work with and we can easily miss information in the results. New author Solomon Rutzky brings us a short article that can help you to better configure your traces to get the information you need.   Read more...