COM Without Registration

When .NET first appeared it wasn't unusual to hear the question "Is COM dead?" In fact COM seems to be alive and well, and in this article I'll look at the way that Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 allow you to use COM in a side-by-side way without installing the usual registration entries – you won't need to use the Windows Registry to use side-by-side COM components.

SQL Server 2005 Security - Part 2 Authorization

Following the discussion of new or enhanced authentication-related functionality in SQL Server 2005 Beta 2 in our previous article, we are shifting our focus to authorization features, which determine the level of access rights once the user's logon process is successfully completed. Among topics that will be covered here, are separation of user and schema, modifiable context of module execution, increased permission granularity, and improved catalog security.

Netlib Encryptionizer Review

SQL Server 2000 has a weak point in how it handles security. SA can see everything, a notion that disturbs many people, especially those that have data security requirements. Netlib has a great product that allows you to encrypt columns, tables, or databases in a way that is seemless to your application. Dale Corey takes a look at this product and how you might use it in your application.

Changing XML Schema attached in SQL Server 2005

XML has become an first class datatype in SQL Server 2005 . You can check my previous articles for an idea of XML features introduced. In this article we will take a look at how we can alter a XML Schema attached to an Typed XML data. XML's can be caegorized into two categories, typed and un-typed. Any XML that conforms to an XML schema is called as typed. And on the contrary plain XML strings are called as un-typed.

Replicating Identity columns in SQL Server - Customizing replication

When transactional replication is used for high availability purposes, such as if you want the applications to access the replicated server when the primary database server fails, one of the hurdles SQL Server database administrators face when configuring replication is tables with identity columns.

In this article, I am going to discuss how to customize the replication in order to make the subscription database look identical to the publishing database, so that when there is a failure in the primary server, it is simple to fail over to the subscription database.

A New Contest!

SQLServerCentral.com is starting a new contest, one where we'll have a winner every week as long as we can find prizes. Read on and see how you can enter.

SQL Maintenance Plans

Do you use the maintenance plans or hate them? Wish they would do more? Curious about how they work under the hood? Cmon, you gotta read this one! Trust us, it's not another "how-to" article! Well, maybe just a little bit!

Data Mining Reloaded

The two main functions of data mining are classification and prediction (or forecasting). Data mining helps you make sense of those countless gigabytes of raw data stored in databases by finding important patterns and rules present in the data or derived from it. Analysts then use this knowledge to make predictions and recommendations about new or future data. The main business applications of data mining are learning who your customers are and what they need, understanding where the sales are coming from and what factors affect them, fashioning marketing strategies, and predicting future business indicators.

The Insight Reports: Grid Computing

In the two years since Insight's last examination of the topic, grid computing has moved out of the laboratory and into mainstream commercial applications. No longer the exclusive tool of researchers seeking to harness enough compute power for massive computational challenges such as weather modeling or weapons test simulations, today grids are being deployed in more traditional commercial computing applications. For example, commercial computing stalwarts IBM, Intel, Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Sun recently announced they were forming the Globus Consortium to drive the technology into the mainstream for applications such as financial analysis, oil exploration and pharmaceutical testing. And within the technical community, new standards being developed called the Web Services Resource Framework (WSRF) will foster convergence of the Web service and grid computing communities, which in the years ahead is likely to have a major impact on quality and diversity of Web services.

SQL Server Data Structure

A look at the page, table, and index structures inside SQL Server.