Ensuring your SQL Server is performing well is a large part of any good DBA's job. It is not just writing good queries, but also monitoring your server and getting alerts on critical issues. Mike Metcalf has brought us a great article that shows how you can setup performance alerts and be notified via SMTP.
2005-08-31
13,147 reads
SQL Server 2000 introduced user-defined functions (UDFs), and they were immediately hailed as a great tool for encapsulating repetitive code, as well as allowing you to perform more complicated processing directly in an SQL expression. On its face, that claim is valid. You can certainly improve readability and maintainability with UDFs. But cleaner code will be cold comfort if your queries bog down and lock up your server.
2005-08-31
3,336 reads
One of the less exciting, but perhaps very powerful new features in SQL Server 2005, the Service Broker is an asynchronous communications method. MVP Srinivas Sampath brings us the second part of his series looking at what you can accomplish with a practical example.
2005-08-30
13,138 reads
How much backup data should you keep around and what are the implications? Part 2 of a series looking at backups and their implications.
2005-08-30
2,752 reads
DTS was one of the most amazing new features of SQL Server 7 and in SQL Server 2005 it has been renamed to Integration Services. This component has some incredible new capabilities, many of which come at a steep learning curve. New author Kristian Wedberg brings us a basic article and some code on how you can SSIS to generate test data.
2005-08-29
15,006 reads
SQL Server Database administrators often generate SQL Statements and execute the generated SQL statement in order to simplify certain tasks. It has always been a twin operation. This article illustrates how to use un-documented stored procedures to execute the generated SQL Statements directly.
2005-08-29
3,490 reads
We've had a lot of coverage of dynamic sql (including another great one from Robert Marda later this week) but this one is a little different. Done in a question/answer format, Andy tries to explain to junior developers why dynamic sql is to be avoided, how to do so, what to do when you can't.
2005-08-26 (first published: 2003-04-23)
48,506 reads
Newly surfaced Tableau Software aims to revolutionize the acquisition and deployment process with its product suite, Tableau Professional and Standard Editions. To a significant degree, it has succeeded...
2005-08-26
2,499 reads
Who builds SQL Server? It's an interesting collection of individuals and we're looking to bring you some profiles of the entire team. Brian Weckler, reporting services guru, is the subject of this interview.
2005-08-25
5,975 reads
We will use SWITCH() to enact conditional formatting in a couple of different ways. First, we will use it to drive formatting of a value to meet requirements that are based upon the magnitude of the value itself. As a part of our practice with SWITCH() to achieve our ends, we will delve into a popular formatting convention for negative (and other "outlier") numbers.
2005-08-25
1,935 reads
By Steve Jones
“Don’t aim to have others like you; aim to have them respect you.” –...
If you work with data pipelines, SQL, notebooks, or machine learning models, a Mac...
By ChrisJenkins
Have you been thinking about migrating your reporting to Microsoft Fabric or Snowflake but...
Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Art, Part 4: Happy...
Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Server Enum Implementation: A...
Comments posted to this topic are about the item BIT_COUNT I
In SQL Server 2025, I have a table (dbo.UserPermission) that contains this data:
UserID UserPermissions 15 23 37What is returned when I run this code:
select bit_count(UserPermissions) as PermissionCount from dbo.UserPermission where UserID = 3;See possible answers