Minimizing the need to restore a backup

The second installment of this series discussed the cost of maintaining systems with various levels of downtime, ways data can be lost, and what constitutes a backup. In this installment, I discuss how to configure your hardware to minimize the need to restore a backup.

Two True Calendar

two True Calendar

File Watcher Task

The File Watcher Task does what it says really, it watches a folder waiting for files. When an available file is found the task completes, returning the name of the file for later use.

The task will detect changes to existing files as well as new files, both actions will cause the file to be found when available. A file is available when the task can open it exclusively. This is important for files that take a long time to be written, such as large files, or those that are just written slowly or delivered via a slow network link.

"TOP" Clause in SQL Server 2005

We all know the "TOP" clause returns the first n number of rows or percentage of rows thereby limiting the number of resulting rows displayed when we are selecting rows in a table.

SQL Server 2005 is packed with new features and enhancements. One of the enhancements in SQL 2005 that we are going to see is the clause, "TOP." The "TOP" clause will now allow us to do Data Manipulation and also allow similar criteria results to be displayed by using the TIES option.

Function to parse a delimited string

This UDF takes a delimited string and parses it into "words" which are returned as rows in a table. The table returned indicates the position of each element in the source string, and converts values to integer and numeric formats if possible.The script contains examples on how to use the function.the original version was written […]

A Call to Arms

Long anticipated, the arrival of radically restructured database architectures is now finally at hand.

Database Geek of the Week - Richard Hundhausen

Richard Hundhausen is the author of Building Web Applications with ADO.NET and XML Web Services and Programming ADO.NET, both from Wiley, as well as the upcoming Working with Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team System from Microsoft Press. He is also a trainer, teaching numerous courses and speaking at conferences such as VSLive and Tech Ed.

Asynchronous client script callbacks

There has been a lot of interest in the web-facing community lately about a new useability feature that goes by a number of different names—XMLHTTP, AJAX, out-of-band requests, and asynchronous client script callbacks, to name a few.

Regardless of the name, this feature provides a way for a standard web page to make calls back to the server, without a traditional page refresh. The user is oblivious to the fact that a server call has occurred, and is not interrupted by it.

Calculate Weekdays Between 2 Dates (revised)

This is a function that takes a start date and end date as parameters and returns the number of weekdays (Monday to Friday) in between. This function assumes that Sunday is set as the first day of the week. Adapted from a vb function that I wrote to calculate standard salary costs for billing purposes. […]

MDX Essentials: String Functions: The .UniqueName Function

n this lesson, we will examine another function / property in the MDX toolset, the .UniqueName function. The general purpose of the .UniqueName function is to return the Unique Name of the object to which it is appended. .UniqueName can be used in conjunction with hierarchies, dimensions, levels, and members, in a manner similar to the .Name function that we examined in String Functions: The .Name Function, and, also like .Name, .UniqueName can be useful in a host of different applications.