Articles

Technical Article

How to move SQL Server from one computer to another?

Moving SQL Server from one computer to another is not a very difficult thing to do, but it often stumps newbie DBAs. Of course, it needs careful planning to ensure that the SQL Server is moved completely and properly to the new machine, and with a minimal downtime and no data loss. This article introduces you to a couple of methods you can employ to move/migrate SQL Server from one computer to another.

2003-01-24

107 reads

SQLServerCentral Article

Worst Practice - Bad Comments

This one is pretty interesting, Andy discusses a few things he sees in comments that not only fail to add value, they end up costing extra time. There's room for discussion here, but definitely a discussion worth having - comments can make you or break you, here's a chance to think about what you think is important in commenting and pass that on to your development team.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

(2)

You rated this post out of 5. Change rating

2003-01-23

11,239 reads

SQLServerCentral Article

How to Search for Date and Time Values

Because of the way date and time values are stored in SQL Server, searching for a particular date or time is not as straightforward as you might think it would be. This article describes how date/time values are stored, how the database design can simplify (or complicate) data retrieval, and how to query date/time data to get the right results every time.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

(1)

You rated this post out of 5. Change rating

2003-01-21

36,218 reads

Technical Article

Auditing Your SQL Server Environment Part I

This article is the first of a series that I plan on writing and placing on my website to help other DBAs in auditing a new SQL Server environment. This article deals with determing which SQL Server logins have weak passwords, with the definition of weak being, no password, password the same as the login name or having a password of only one character.The stored procedure used for this article is embedded in the article and it has been submitted as a independent script named spAuditPasswords.

2003-01-21

66 reads

SQLServerCentral Article

Who Needs Change Management?

You have spent thousands of dollars on that cool technology; clustering, redundant controllers, redundant disks, redundant power supplies, redundant NIC cards, multiple network drops, fancy tape backup devices and the latest and greatest tape technology. You are all set. There is no way your going to have downtime. Right?

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

You rated this post out of 5. Change rating

2003-01-16

4,961 reads

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

7,108 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

18,934 reads

Blogs

T-SQL Tuesday #203: Risk and Reward

By

This is timely, as I’m currently on a boat in the Adriatic taking a...

dataMinds Connect 2026 – Slides & Scripts

By

You can find the slides and SQL scripts for my session “Spice up your...

How to Clear the SSMS Cache (SSMS 21 and Later)

By

How to Clear the SSMS Cache (SSMS 21 and Later) Updated...

Read the latest Blogs

Forums

Using CHOOSE()

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Using CHOOSE()

Re-Seeding a Broken Log Shipping Secondary (Without Touching the Primary)

By LukaMK

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Re-Seeding a Broken Log Shipping...

The DBA is Dead! Long Live the !

By Grant Fritchey

Comments posted to this topic are about the item The DBA is Dead! Long...

Visit the forum

Question of the Day

Using CHOOSE()

We have this code that sets some status values and then queries them using the CHOOSE() function in SQL Server 2025.

CREATE TABLE Status
(
    StatusID INT,
    StatusDescription VARCHAR(20)
);
GO
INSERT dbo.Status
(
    StatusID,
    StatusDescription
)
VALUES
(0, 'Uncategorized'),
(1, 'Active'),
(2, 'Inactive'),
(3, 'Temp');

GO
SELECT CHOOSE(StatusID, 'Unknown', 'Active', 'Inactive', 'Temporary')
FROM Status;
When the SELECT runs, what is returned?

See possible answers