Sysforeignkeys is a valuable SQL Server resource. How many times have you had to "pick up the pieces" from a database developed by someone else and dropped on your desk? Ever get a database diagram with that? A data dictionary? Probably not too often. Jeffrey Yao has developed a system of finding those parent-child relationships automatically and displaying them so he can get up to speed quickly on these inherited databases. Read on to find out more.   Read more...

As Chris points out, in most applications these days you end up having to go with optimistic locking, which presents a few challenges. Chris works through the list of options. If you're building web/disconnected apps and need anything besides last update wins, this one is for you.   Read more...

This article by Simon Galbraith (from Red Gate software, maker of SQL Compare) discusses migrating changes from development to staging, QA, and on to production. If you've never seen the need for a schema compare tool (Steve Jones!), this is worth reading.  Read more...

Greg returns with an article based on some practical experience using QA templates to save time and work. Good examples, good work through, good idea!   Read more...

Quite a while back Andy wrote an article about why not using primary keys and clustered indexes was a worst practice. Chris weighs in this week with a great article that gives some more in depth info on clustered indexes and why he thinks they should be used on every table.   Read more...

This week Andy looks at where, when, and how jobs should be run and why you need to think about those items before you build the job. Part of this is deciding what runs on production servers and what doesn't.   Read more...

How many jobs do you have? 10? 100? 1000? Andy makes the point that what works to manage for a small number of jobs doesn't work when that number doubles or triples (well, unless you only had 1 job to start with!). In part one of two, this article looks at ideas for using categories and naming conventions to get things under control.   Read more...

This one is pretty interesting, Andy discusses a few things he sees in comments that not only fail to add value, they end up costing extra time. There's room for discussion here, but definitely a discussion worth having - comments can make you or break you, here's a chance to think about what you think is important in commenting and pass that on to your development team.   Read more...

In this follow up to one of our most popular articles, Andy responds to comments posted by readers and discusses how to manage SQL logins effectively in your applications.   Read more...

This article briefly discusses SQL Server's data and procedure cache and shows you the common Transact-SQL statements/command and system tables that you can use to interact with the cache through Transact-SQL.   Read more...

In this follow up article Andy looks at how maintenance plans report errors and how they actually accomplish what they do. A little snooping with Profiler reveals all!   Read more...

Version control for stored procedures isn't always popular and certainly isn't easy. Or can it be? Andy discusses a technique he used on a recent project that you might find interesting.   Read more...

Ever have a large batch of scripts you need to run? It takes a while if you have to open each one in Query Analyzer and execute it. One of our readers proposed an alternative - take a look the small app Andy Warren wrote to make doing this task a breeze.   Read more...

Sysforeignkeys is a valuable SQL Server resource. How many times have you had to "pick up the pieces" from a database developed by someone else and dropped on your desk? Ever get a database diagram with that? A data dictionary? Probably not too often. Jeffrey Yao has developed a system of finding those parent-child relationships automatically and displaying them so he can get up to speed quickly on these inherited databases. Read on to find out more.   Read more...

As Chris points out, in most applications these days you end up having to go with optimistic locking, which presents a few challenges. Chris works through the list of options. If you're building web/disconnected apps and need anything besides last update wins, this one is for you.   Read more...

Quite a while back Andy wrote an article about why not using primary keys and clustered indexes was a worst practice. Chris weighs in this week with a great article that gives some more in depth info on clustered indexes and why he thinks they should be used on every table.   Read more...