What Your SP Can Return
Return values from stored procedures (not output params, true return values) probably aren't used as often as they should be. Robert gives you some good examples of how to use them.
2003-08-05
9,883 reads
Articles
DBMS vs File Management System
This is a high level article that compares the use of a DBMS with file management systems. Interesting to think about products that use the file system successfully - not everything needs SQL...or does it?
2003-08-04
31,776 reads
Worst Practice - Bad Connection Strings and Bad Info in Sysprocesses
Andy returns to the Worst Practice series this week with a short article looking at how connection strings in applications affect what you see in sysprocesses. Perhaps less controversial (in our opinion) that some of the other worst practices, this is something easy to fix and definitely worth fixing! Read the article and post a comment - explore other points of view! Readers posting a comment will be entered in a drawing for a copy of the SQL Server 2000 Resource Kit.
2003-08-01
15,788 reads
SQLCentric
This is an update to v1.2 of the product which does monitoring of your SQL servers. Looks like it checks service status, jobs, disk space, some other things. (Not Reviewed)
2003-08-01
1,425 reads
SQL Server Security: Why Security Is Important
Regular columnist Brian Kelley reviews the real world impact that inadequate security can have by reviewing some recent incidents in the sql/security world. Very much worth reading, especially if you have credit card data.
2003-07-31
7,555 reads
Lots of Tables and a Little DMO
Andy discusses a recent thread where a reader has very slow login tables with 2000 tables. After writing some DMO code (very handy by the way) and creating some objects, he can't track it down. Have any ideas?
2003-07-30
7,115 reads
MZTools - Addin for VB6
Freeware! This add-in gives you some great extra features when working in VB6. It has a tab index setter, options to add a chunk of error handling code, a simple code analyzer that gives you some metrics, and my favorite - an option to identify unused code and variables. If you're still using VB6 it's worth trying.
2003-07-30
1,541 reads
Automated Trace File Collection
This article shows how to create a trace and capture it into a table using a combination of SQL and VBScript. Direct and to the point, you can read this and try it easily.
2003-07-29
9,112 reads
Where Do I Want To Go Today? - Upsert
Where should SQL Server go in the future? What enhancements are needed? Steve Jones starts to explore his wish list for future versions of SQL Server.
2003-07-28
7,982 reads
Finding and Deleting Duplicate Data
Bad data is almost a given, but true duplicate data can really cause you some headaches. How do you remove all the duplicates and still leave a 'keeper' record? If you think procedural code it's not too hard, but can you do a set based solution? Chris shows you show!
2003-07-25
19,985 reads
Blogs
Upgrading SQL Server Containers on the Laptop
By Steve Jones
I don’t have SQL Server installed on my laptop. In an effort to keep...
How to Find Expensive Queries in Amazon Redshift
Slow-running queries can degrade your Redshift cluster’s performance and lead to increased costs. Identifying...
Forums
Having Issue deploying a report to an on prem server from PowerBI desktop
Using PowerBI Version1.25.9508.3237(January 2026). Installed Microsoft Power BI Desktop (Optimized for Power BI Report...
SQL 2019 instance with AG, across 2 Windows 2016 OS servers - OSin-place upgrade
Hi all Can I get some perspective from the community please on performing in-place...
How Long is a Long I/O?
Comments posted to this topic are about the item How Long is a Long...
Question of the Day
How Long is a Long I/O?
In SQL Server 2025, a long I/O is recorded in the error log with message 833. How long much an I/O request be outstanding before this message is written to the log?
See possible answers