SQL Server Indexes need to be effective. It is wrong to have too few or too many. The ones you create must ensure that the workload reads the data quickly with a minimum of I/O. As well as a sound knowledge of the way that relational databases work, it helps to be familiar with the Dynamic Management Objects that are there to assist with your indexing strategy.
2012-10-23
4,324 reads
Many companies now have a requirement to keep data for long periods of time. While this data does have to be available if requested, it usually does not need to be accessible by the application for any current transactions. Data that falls into this category are a good candidate for archival.
2012-10-22
3,934 reads
This white paper describes how to export master data from Microsoft SQL Server Master Data Services (MDS) using a subscription view, and how to import the master data into an external system using SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS). The white paper provides a step-by-step sample for creating a subscription view and an SSIS package.
2012-10-19
3,422 reads
SQL Server's 'Semantic Search' feature seemed an exciting feature when first shown. Was it really true that Microsoft had come up with a system to rival the industry-leaders, one that could extract the contextual meaning of terms in text, or automatically categorise the subject matter of text? On first inspection, it seems unlikely.
2012-10-18
2,985 reads
Charts are one of the commonest ways of visualizing reports from data. Report Builder provides a way of generating charts and reports that will be intuitive to anyone who has done the same in Excel. Robert Sheldon provides a simple explanation of how to get the best from charts using Report Builder.
2012-10-17
3,668 reads
October's meeting on Thursday 18th will be a virtual meeting which means anyone in the world can attend if they have access to a PC with an internet connection. We are pleased to announce that Grant Fritchey will be giving us 2 sessions.
2012-10-16
2,431 reads
Microsoft IT protects against unplanned Transactional Replication outages and issues by using best practices and proactive monitoring. This results in increased stability, simplified management and improved performance of transactional replication environments.
2012-10-12
5,472 reads
In a previous tip on Monitor Your SQL Server Virtual Log Files with Policy Based Management, we have seen how we can use Policy Based Management to monitor the number of virtual log files (VLFs) in our SQL Server databases. However, even with that most of the solutions I see online involve the creation of temporary tables and/or a combination of using cursors to get the total number of VLFs in a transaction log file. Is there a much easier solution?
2012-10-11
3,321 reads
As the SQL Developer community grows to embrace the benefits of test-driven development for databases, so the importance of learning to do it properly increases. One way of learning effective TDD is by the use of code kata – short practice sessions that encourage test-first development in baby steps. I have a limited number of licences for SQL Test to give away free – just for practicing a bit of TDD and telling me about it.
2012-10-10 (first published: 2012-09-19)
5,923 reads
As you know, SQL Server databases and backup files can take up a lot of disk space. When disk is running low and you need to troubleshoot disk space issues, the first thing to do is to find large files that are consuming disk space. In this article I will show you a PowerShell script that you can use to find large files on your disks.
2012-10-10
3,714 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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