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SQLServerCentral Article

Indexes: An Overview and Maintenance for Performance

SQL Server for the most part will maintain itself, updating statistics, choosing optimal query plans, and requiring minimal maintenance to keep running. However to optain optimum performance, a real DBA needs to spend some time checking and tuning indexes, rebuilding them as fillfactors change. This new article from Desiree Harris looks at how you can perform some of these tasks to keep your server performing at the optimum level.

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2004-12-30

12,794 reads

SQLServerCentral Article

Oracle Link

SQL Server is the best RDBMS, at least according to the current thinking at SQLServerCentral.com, and is fully capable of meeting all of your database needs. However not all database systems run on SQL Server and it seems that we often see data from some other system being consolidated on SQL Server for additional processing or reporting. DTS usually handles the load, but there are times that you might want create a linked server to an Oracle system for updating individual rows. New author Adria

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2004-12-29

17,475 reads

Technical Article

Get all from Table A that isn't in Table B

A common requirement when building a data warehouse is to be able to get all rows from a staging table where the business key is not in the dimension table. For example, I may want to get all rows from my STG_DATE table where the DateID is not in DIM_DATE.DateID.

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2004-12-29

2,168 reads

SQLServerCentral Article

Tokenizing a String Using PARSENAME

SQL Server string manipulation using T-SQL leaves lots to be desired. Many postings and complaints about T-SQL deal with strings, but there are ways to work with it. Author Eli Leiba brings us a way to split out portions of a string that contains tokens with a user defined function. Read on to see how this is accomplished and the code used to perform the splitting.

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2004-12-27

12,206 reads

Technical Article

SQL Server: Compare Query Results - Part I

In the Database administration world, it is often necessary to run a query on the production box and then run the same query on the QA or UAT box and compare the results. In this article, I would like to introduce a method that takes advantage of an MS-DOS batch file and SQL Server utility, BCP.exe, to compare the query results executed on two different servers.

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2004-12-24

1,828 reads

Technical Article

Clustering for Indexes

There is nothing spectacular about using indexes per say. However, on many occasions I have come across a variety of SQL coders that never consider validating that the index they think they are using is efficient or even being used at all. We can all put indexes on the columns that we think will be required to satisfy individual queries, but how do we know if they will ever be used. You see, if the underlying table data is constructed, contains, or is ordered in a particular way, our indexes may never be used. One of the factors around the use of an index is its clustering factor and this is what this article is about.

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2004-12-23

3,412 reads

Technical Article

Introduction to MSSQL Server 2000 Analysis Services: Performing Increm

This article is a member of the series Introduction to MSSQL Server 2000 Analysis Services. The series is designed to provide hands-on application of the fundamentals of MS SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services, with each installment progressively adding features and techniques designed to meet specific real - world needs.

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2004-12-22

2,027 reads

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Backing Up a DMK

In SQL Server 2025, I have a database with a Database Masker Key (DMK). I want to back up this key and keep a copy offline. When do I have to open this key before running the backup?

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