World Backup Day
This Saturday is World Backup Day, and with this in mind, Red Gate's Brian Harris talks about SQL Backup 7 and why they want to make backup verification a focus for more DBAs.
2012-03-30
1,962 reads
Additional Articles
Get Back into SQL Server After You've Locked Yourself Out
Someone, while locking down the SQL Server, removed the permissions by which the DBAs came in and administered the server. As a result, we cannot get back into SQL Server. How can we restore our access to SQL Server? Check out this tip to find out.
2012-03-29
4,423 reads
Storing E-mail addresses more efficiently in SQL Server
A lot of people are storing large quantities of e-mail addresses in their systems. Since a large percentage of any system's user base is going to be supplying e-mail addresses from a few of the vastly popular providers (such as GMail and Hotmail), we are storing the "@gmail.com" and "@hotmail.com" parts of those addresses on disk over and over and over again.
2012-03-27
5,974 reads
Using SQL Server's Output Clause
When you are inserting, updating, or deleting records from a table, SQL Server keeps track of the records that are changed in two different pseudo tables: INSERTED, and DELETED. These tables are normally used in DML triggers. If you use the OUTPUT clause on an INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE or MERGE statement you can expose the records that go to these pseudo tables to your application and/or T-SQL code.
2012-03-26
3,728 reads
Creating a Map Report in SSRS - SQL Server 2008 R2
SQL Server 2008 R2 brought several new features into the SSRS (SQL Server Reporting Services) arena. In the data visualization category, we now have three additional ways to display and visualize/analyze data in the reports.
2012-03-23
4,108 reads
Managing and Connecting to AlwaysOn Availability Groups
From the previous AlwaysOn Availability Group article, we provided a name for the availability group listener which is simply a unique DNS name as a Virtual Network Name (VNN) to direct read-write requests to the primary replica and read-only requests to the read-only secondary replica.
2012-03-22
1,958 reads
SQL Server Ranking Functions
SQL Server includes a subset of four ranking functions that can be used to rank the rows of your result set over a partition. This article presents those functions and examples of their use.
2012-03-20
3,874 reads
Steps to Drop an Orphan SQL Server User when it owns a Schema or Role
What do you do when you need to remove an orphaned user, but they are the owner of a Schema or Role on that database?
2012-03-16
3,321 reads
Using The AlwaysOn Feature of SQL Server 2012
This is the first in a four-part series on the new AlwaysOn feature in SQL Server 2012. In this article, AlwaysOn is introduced and contrasted with previous high-availability solutions in SQL Server. The second part of the series will commence with a detailed walkthrough on preparing the environment for AlwaysOn
2012-03-15
3,949 reads
No Significant Fragmentation? Look Closer…
If you are relying on using 'best-practice' percentage-based thresholds when you are creating an index maintenance plan for a SQL Server that checks the fragmentation in your pages, you may miss occasional 'edge' conditions on larger tables that will cause severe degradation in performance. It is worth being aware of patterns of data access in particular tables when judging the best threshold figure to use.
2012-03-14
3,229 reads
Blogs
A New Word: los vidados
By Steve Jones
los vidados – n. the half-remembered acquaintances you knew years ago, who you might...
In-Person CISA Training – April 13-16, 2026
By Brian Kelley
I will be leading an in-person Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) exam prep class...
EightKB 2026
EightKB is back again for 2026! The biggest online SQL Server internals conference is...
Forums
Vectors in SQL Server 2025
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Odd Sequences
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Question of the Day
Odd Sequences
What values are returned from this code?
CREATE SEQUENCE NumericSequence
AS NUMERIC(5,1)
START WITH 1.0
INCREMENT BY 0.1;
GO
SELECT NEXT VALUE FOR NumericSequence
GO
SELECT NEXT VALUE FOR NumericSequence
GO See possible answers