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Making a more reliable and flexible sp_MSforeachdb

While the system procedure sp_MSforeachdb is neither documented nor officially supported, most SQL Server professionals have used it at one time or another. This is typically for ad hoc maintenance tasks, but many people (myself included) have used this type of looping activity in permanent routines. Sadly, I have discovered instances where, under heavy load and/or with a large number of databases, the procedure can actually skip multiple catalogs with no error or warning message. Since this situation is not easily reproducible, and since Microsoft typically has no interest in fixing unsupported objects, this may be happening in your environment right now

2011-01-18

3,580 reads

External Article

Data Conversion in SQL Server

Most of the time, you do not have to worry about implicit conversion in SQL expressions, or when assigning a value to a column. Just occasionally, though, you'll find that data gets truncated, queries run slowly, or comparisons just seem plain wrong. Robert Sheldon explains why you sometimes need to be very careful if you mix data types when manipulating values.

2011-01-12

4,537 reads

External Article

Contiguous Time Periods

It is always more efficient to maintain referential integrity by using constraints rather than triggers. Sometimes it isn't obvious how to do this. Until a recent idea by Alex Kuznetsov, the history table presented problems for checking data that were difficult to solve with constraints. Joe Celko explains.

2011-01-11

3,294 reads

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Question of the Day

The Max PK Length

If I create a multiple column Primary Key constraint, what is the most number of bytes I can include in the constraint?

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