Articles

SQLServerCentral Article

Another Disaster (Almost)

Andy had a semi-disaster similar to the one he wrote about last year. Interesting to see the kinds of problems that happen to other people. This article raises some interesting points that are outside the scope of basic disaster recovery, looking at how/when to move databases to a different server and how to reduce the server load dynamically.

You rated this post out of 5. Change rating

2003-01-14

7,062 reads

SQLServerCentral Article

A Normalization Primer

For most DBAs, normalization is an understood concept, a bread and butter bit of knowledge. However, it is not at all unusual to review a database design by a development group for an OLTP (OnLine Transaction Processing) environment and find that the schema chosen is anything but properly normalized. This article by Brian Kelley will give you the core knowledge to data model.

(3)

You rated this post out of 5. Change rating

2003-01-13

18,716 reads

SQLServerCentral Article

Case Study: Importing New Data Without Emptying Existing Tables

The challenge for Robert Marda was to devise a way to keep the data available at all times while importing the new data, detect if a full or daily update was received and run appropriate data pumps, put in sufficient fail safes to ensure bad data would not get imported, and to make the process automatic including notification to pagers upon failure. Robert shows you how he did it here.

You rated this post out of 5. Change rating

2003-01-09

8,218 reads

SQLServerCentral Article

Default Values and Named Parameters for Stored Procs

Are you using default values for your parameters? Using named parameters when you call the proc or passing the values by ordinal? Should you be? Andy thinks 6 out of 10 of our readers will agree with his point of view, we'll be a little more conservative and guess that 5 of out 10 will be closer.

(1)

You rated this post out of 5. Change rating

2003-01-08

8,235 reads

Blogs

The Book of Redgate: Spread across the world

By

This was Redgate in 2010, spread across the globe. First the EU/US Here’s Asia...

Merry Christmas

By

Today is Christmas and while I do not expect anybody to actual be reading...

Self-Hosting a Photo Server the Whole Family Can Use

By

Until recently, my family's 90,000+ photos have been hidden away in the depths of...

Read the latest Blogs

Forums

SQL Server 2025 Backup Compression Algorithm

By Johan Bijnens

Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Server 2025 Backup Compression...

The Large Encoded Value

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Large Encoded Value

The Side Job

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Side Job

Visit the forum

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