Developing a backup procedure that makes sure you can do restores should be one of your top priorities as a DBA. In this article Greg Larsen discusses some of the concepts to consider when developing, building and testing a backup strategy.
2013-01-14
3,298 reads
When creating pie charts using data from Analysis Services, having the MDX query calculate and return the percentages along with the counts or sums is extremely efficient. In this tip, we walk through an example of how this can be done.
2013-01-11
3,709 reads
A UDF is very convenient for centralising business logic as we can specify a set of business logic in one UDF which references multiple stored procedures and ad-hoc queries. However, they can lead to significant performance degradation due to their demands on the CPU
2013-01-10
4,126 reads
I saw your recent tip on Calculating Mathematical Values in SQL Server and have some related issues as I try to round values in my application. My users and me have a difference of opinion on some of the calculations in our reporting applications. All of the code is in T-SQL, but I think the reporting issues are related to data types and rounding down or rounding up rules. Do you have any insight into these issues? I would like to see some examples with a variety of coding options.
2013-01-09
3,694 reads
Arshad Ali examines the different concepts of partitioning in SQL Server 2012 and provides a step-by-step guide on creating a partition table/index.
2013-01-08
2,729 reads
It is frustrating when you hit 'submit' and you get the hourglass big-time. Is it the database to blame? It could be, but there are other suspects that should be considered. Feodor Georgiev describes where, in the long route, to and fro', that a data request makes before returning, that things can get snarled up.
2013-01-07
4,716 reads
It should be easy to model a game of poker in SQL. The problem is, however, that you need to model a permutation from a set of elements. Joe Celko argues that using a group of columns to do this isn't necessarily a violation of 1NF, since a permutation is atomic. Then comes the second problem: how would you sort such a column-base permutation in order? Sorting columns in SQL?
2013-01-04
4,573 reads
Partitioning has improved with each new version of SQL Server. From partitioned views in SQL Server 7.0 through partition table parallelism in SQL Server 2008. With SQL Server 2012, we are now allowed to even create up to a 15K partition on a single table.
2013-01-03
4,975 reads
Often times we are tasked with having to programmatically come with a list of durations per SQL Server Agent Job to trend the run times and order the results by date. Unfortunately it's not always easy in the way the data is stored in the system tables in the MSDB database. This tip explains how to use the system tables to get the data into the correct format for dates and job durations.
2013-01-02
3,890 reads
The Performance Analysis of Logs tool is a general tool for collecting and analysing log data. With the addition of a template, it becomes an effective way of analysing data from performance counters for SQL Server, in order to diagnose performance problems and capture baseline information.
2013-01-01
5,629 reads
By Steve Jones
I was looking over the CHOOSE() function while editing an article at SQL Server...
By Brian Kelley
Here is another short video (~ 15 minutes). This is by the author of...
By Steve Jones
I had a briefing for the 2026 PASS Data Community Summit, which is just...
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In SQL Server 2022+, what does the ##MS_DatabaseConnector## role allow?
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