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SQLServerCentral Article

Seven Showplan Red Flags

SQL Server showplan is a great tool for analyzing queries and determining whether or not more performance tuning needs to be done. However working with showplan can be confusing and it takes some practice to learn the ins and outs of what is occurring. Joseph Sack looks at showplan and seven of the main things that he is aware of when looking at the results. If you've rarely or never used showplan, this is a great article to get started in learning how an experienced DBA views the output.

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2004-07-15

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SQLServerCentral Article

An Is Null Gotcha

In T-SQL you should use the IS NULL keywords to test for a null value. But David Poole runs into a strange gotcha in one of his applications where he is testing for a null value. It's an interesting read following Sherlock Poole around on his hunt to find an error.

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2004-07-14

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SQLServerCentral Article

DTS Parallel Processing

SQL Server DTS is an amazing ETL tool. Parallel processing is not only possible, but author Leo Peysakhovich shows us how he does it in this article about his index rebuild process. By bundling DTS into SQL Server for free, Microsoft gave us a platform for not only ETL, but also many basic tasks that all DBAs are stuck working on. Read on to see if parallel processing of index rebuilds is something you can use.

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2004-07-13

9,843 reads

SQLServerCentral Article

Save Your Password

Storing passwords in SQL Server for authentication by your application is a common practice. But not always a good one. Someone with access could easily see all passwords and perhaps cause mischief inside your application. Imagine the office gossip getting access to your HR application as the HR director! Not a good thing. Dinesh Asanka has written a short piece on how you can use a built in function in SQL Server to encrypt these passwords and use them with a minimum of effort.

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2004-07-12

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SQLServerCentral Article

Is all code really code? One question from an interview

Andy discusses one of the questions he uses to screen senior developer candidates. While the question itself is interesting, we think it will be more interesting to see how many of you agree with one of his positions - that developers think of program code and sql code as different animals, especially when it comes to debugging.

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2004-07-09

11,914 reads

SQLServerCentral Article

Data Migration - Quickly Inserting New Data

Migrating data from one SQL Server database to another can be challenging. Steve Jones has a new series that looks at various techniques that he's used to move data into a new database. This one looks at how you can quickly take Excel based data and insert it into a new database without using DTS.

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2004-07-08

10,539 reads

SQLServerCentral Article

Review: SQL Trace Manager

Setting up SQL Server server-side traces is not the easiest task in the world. Quantum Software Research has built a product that is an MMC add-in to manage these traces. Author Dale Corey takes a look at this product and how well it works with SQL Server 2000.

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2004-07-07

9,841 reads

SQLServerCentral Article

SQL Server Express

SQL Server Express 2005 is a new product that has been released (in Beta) as a followon to the MSDE product. A number of new features as well as complementary products for all of the .NET development tools are now available. Read on for a quick summary of what this new product line is all about.

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2004-07-02

14,212 reads

SQLServerCentral Article

Making good use of Sysforeignkeys table -- Part 2 Check Table Relation

Using sysforeignkeys to discover SQL Server circular relationships. Have you ever tried this? Most of us probably haven't, but Jeffrey Yao often needs to reverse engineer databases for his clients. Here's a followup to his first article where he presents another of his techniques for doing a little detective work in your databases.

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2004-06-30

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Question of the Day

The Large Encoded Value

I want to use the new BASE64_ENCODE() function in SQL Server 2025, but return a string that isn't large type. What is the longest varbinary string I can pass in and still get a varchar(8000) returned?

See possible answers