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SQLServerCentral Article

Comparison of Oracle Drivers

Oracle is usually a dirty word in the SQL Server community, but like it or not, lots of data resides in Oracle databases. And SQL Server is often used to gather this data together in a warehouse of some sort for spinning cubes, generating reports, etc. Haidong Ji looks at the various methods that you can connect to an Oracle driver and compares the speed of each. If you need to get data from Oracle, or may need to, this is the place you want to start.

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2004-07-21

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SQLServerCentral Article

Tutorial: Changing the Visibility Objects in Reporting Services

In the last tutorial in this series of Reporting Services tutorials we added conditional formatting to the report. Now that we have created our first report and have added a bit of flare to it, we will go ahead and make it even cleaner. In this very quick demonstration, we will go ahead and change the visibility of rows or columns based on given conditions.

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2004-07-20

18,078 reads

SQLServerCentral Article

New Beta Search

We've been working on it over the years, trying to get some search engine that works. Well, we're trying a new one from Surfinity. Give it a try and let us know how it works. Read on for a few details about what we're using.

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2004-07-19

3,223 reads

Technical Article

Freeware: Tablesizer

How many times do you need to estimate space for a new application? Or estimate growth for an existing one? We've had a new contribution to the freeware section of the site. Tablesizer will allow you to guesstimate how much disk space you'll need. Take a peek if you need it, rate the product and give the author any feedback you have.

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2004-07-19

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Technical Article

Books on line update

Books on line has been updated since the release of SQL2000.
If you check the documentation for the sp_addlogin stored procedure and example E says
SELECT CONVERT(VARBINARY(32), password) then you should update your installation.

2004-07-16

193 reads

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

22,224 reads

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

11,704 reads

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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Question of the Day

URL Safe or Not?

If I use BASE4_ENCODE() in SQL Server 2025, is the output URL Safe by default?

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