A Failed Jobs Monitoring System
One DBA's tale of how to monitor jobs for failure and ensure that the DBA is alerted to the fact that there is a problem. (from Feb 2008)
2009-09-04 (first published: 2008-02-05)
23,321 reads
TJay Belt
2009-04-01
5,231 reads
On-Call Duties
What are some of the on-call duties a DBA must perform? TJay Belt talks about them in this new article.
2008-10-27
6,311 reads
A Simple DR Solution
Tjay Belt brings us a quick and easy DR solution that might provide you some protection if you don't have a DR plan and want some lessons learned in this area.
2008-07-31
8,358 reads
Audit Database Changes in the Real World
Tjay Belt brings us a story of how auditing was actually implemented and a discussion of why particular decisions were made.
2008-06-11
9,133 reads
2008-03-27
5,159 reads
sp_GetBackupInfo
This will report all backup activity for all databases, sorted by date, so you see the last backup activity first. You can filter this one by a db name as well, and only see the backup info for said database.
2002-03-07
828 reads
sp_GetLastBackup
This will get the last date a database was backuped. It allows you to report this date on all databases on a server, or pass in a db name, and it'll report the date that db was last backed up
2002-03-07
473 reads
spAddField
spAddField is the proc I use to add all fields to the db in our upgrade scripts. With this proc, you pass it the tablename, fieldname, datatype, and null or not null. This will call spGetFieldsExists and see if the fields exists or not. If it does, spAddField will drop that column. Then it readds […]
2002-03-05
255 reads
spDropField
spDropField does exactly the opposite of spAddField. It checks for existence, then drops it, if it does exist.
2002-03-05
171 reads
Blogs
T-SQL Tuesday #203: Risk and Reward
By Steve Jones
This is timely, as I’m currently on a boat in the Adriatic taking a...
dataMinds Connect 2026 – Slides & Scripts
You can find the slides and SQL scripts for my session “Spice up your...
How to Clear the SSMS Cache (SSMS 21 and Later)
By SQLPals
How to Clear the SSMS Cache (SSMS 21 and Later) Updated...
Forums
Using CHOOSE()
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Using CHOOSE()
Re-Seeding a Broken Log Shipping Secondary (Without Touching the Primary)
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Re-Seeding a Broken Log Shipping...
The DBA is Dead! Long Live the !
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The DBA is Dead! Long...
Question of the Day
Using CHOOSE()
We have this code that sets some status values and then queries them using the CHOOSE() function in SQL Server 2025.
CREATE TABLE Status
(
StatusID INT,
StatusDescription VARCHAR(20)
);
GO
INSERT dbo.Status
(
StatusID,
StatusDescription
)
VALUES
(0, 'Uncategorized'),
(1, 'Active'),
(2, 'Inactive'),
(3, 'Temp');
GO
SELECT CHOOSE(StatusID, 'Unknown', 'Active', 'Inactive', 'Temporary')
FROM Status;
When the SELECT runs, what is returned? See possible answers