Articles

Technical Article

Loving to Hate the Data Administrator

You can just hear it now: At the table down the hall, there’s a group of people having, (as it seems to you) yet another academic discussion on the merits of third-normal form and the structure of primary keys. You’ve heard many discussions like this before — it all seems so pointless. After all, doesn’t it just boil down to “create table” commands and a bunch of DDL? You mastered all that in your first DBA class. What could be so hard?

2005-10-31

3,688 reads

SQLServerCentral Article

Simplify the Creation of XML from SQL Server Data

SQL Server 2000 had extensions built in to allow you to work with XML data, however, most installations did not work with it. XML has proven that it is a very powerful way of transmitting and working with data, but creating it from relational data has proven to be difficult. New author Hugh Lynch, CTO of Restricted Stock Systems, Inc. brin gs us a method for easily creating XML from your SQL Servers.

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2005-10-27

10,483 reads

Technical Article

Accurate Numeric Identifiers: Using Verhoeff's Method for Check Digits

Check digits–not to be confused with checksums–are often added to numeric identifiers such as customer and product numbers to reduce the chance of incorrect entries. Sequences of numbers are notoriously easy to mistype, and constraints alone generally won't do the job. In this excellent article, Lynn Fields shows you how to implement the "Cadillac" of check digit methods–the Verhoeff Dihedral Group.

2005-10-26

2,735 reads

External Article

High Call Volume SQL Server Applications on NUMA Systems

One of the most difficult database operations to scale-up on high-end server systems is the network call. In fact, without special precautions, a high call volume database application can have severe negative scaling on large systems. It is suspected that this problem is more pronounced on NUMA systems than basic SMP systems. A NUMA system with 16 processors can have significantly lower throughput capability than an otherwise comparable 4-way SMP system.

2005-10-25

1,754 reads

SQLServerCentral Article

Conducting a SQL Server Operational Audit

Auditing, analyzing and documenting your SQL Server installation is becoming more important all the time, especially as more and more attention is being paid to the security of your environment. Chad Miller brings us a look at a framework and a sample document you can use in your environment to conduct an audit.

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2005-10-24

13,642 reads

Technical Article

VIEWS: The Key to Database Agility

There is an important technique for creating truly agile databases that I haven’t seen in his writings; one which is well-known to DBAs, but little understood in the application development community – the use of database views to create a layer of abstraction between the normalized relational tables and the applications that use the data.

2005-10-21

3,736 reads

SQLServerCentral Article

Have You Been Told Today

SQL Server 2000 has a great job and alert subsystem, but it doesn't do everything. There are times when you want to be notified that something has completed, or not completed. New author Frank Loschiavo brings us a way to ensure that when you run a query you are notified if and when it completes.

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2005-10-20

6,150 reads

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Question of the Day

UNISTR Basics

What does this code return in SQL Server 2025+? (assume the database has an appropriate collation) 

SELECT UNISTR('Hello 4E16754C') AS 'A Classic';
A:   B:  

See possible answers