Database Snapshot (DB Snapshot for short) is a new tool offered by SQL Server 2005. Database snapshots can be used to protect against user errors, by creating a "snapshot" of your data that you can refer to later if you need to recover data or database objects that were accidentally (or even intentionally) updated or dropped. While the feature is quite useful, it doesn’t provide a 100% guarantee against user errors.
2006-01-24
2,078 reads
Do you have a Web site or other system that deals in secrets of any sort? It seems like every time I give a security talk, people ask how to deal with the sticky problem of storing secrets. Connection strings with passwords are an obvious problem. You're better off simply using integrated security to get rid of those secrets, at least with SQL Server™, or an Oracle database. But what about credit card numbers and other financial or personal information? Can encryption help?
2006-01-23
2,476 reads
When considering business intelligence (BI) software, it is essential to be aware of underlying issues that can seriously impact on your bottom line. In a country where most businesses have information stored in several different databases, it’s no secret that the BI strategy you choose will effect your profit and loss target. From data collection and integration to data analysis, the holy grail of Business Intelligence software combines your disparate databases to provide a decision support system that will enable you to make key conclusions using all of the available information.
2006-01-20
2,455 reads
This document describes the improved indexed views capability of SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition. Indexed views are explained and specific scenarios in which they may provide performance improvements are discussed.
2006-01-19
2,506 reads
As we all know, SQL Server 2005 has new features when compared to SQL Server 2000. One of the features that we are going to discuss in this article is the Row_Number() function. SQL Server Database administrators and developers have been longing for this function for a long time--now the wait is over.
2006-01-18
4,705 reads
In this series of articles, you will learn the basics of installing Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 as well as how to use MOM to monitor SQL Server. This article takes advantage of virtualization. We will use VMware Workstation 5 to create the lab to introduce you to the basics of installing MOM to monitor SQL Server.
2006-01-17
3,401 reads
A question came up on an internal alias about how can one download a file over HTTP. Here's a script that does that, should be trivial to wrap it inside a task if you forsee doing this over and over again.
2006-01-13
2,470 reads
Continuing the coverage of debugging features in SQL Server 2005 Integration Services Data Flow, which we started in the previous installment of this series, we will now focus on the Script Component.
2006-01-12
1,301 reads
The alternative to surrogate keys is natural data keys. In order to understand the many substantial benefits of surrogate keys it's necessary to discuss some background on the issues involved.
2006-01-10
4,860 reads
In this lesson, we revisit usage-based optimization, a subject that we undertook in my article MSAS Administration and Optimization: Simple Cube Usage Analysis, in September of 2003, and MSAS Administration and Optimization: Toward More Sophisticated Analysis in October of 2003. In the earlier articles, we discovered that, among several tools that Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services offered us to assist in the maintenance and optimization of our cubes, two of these tools, the Usage Analysis Wizard and the Usage-Based Optimization Wizard, leveraged the usage-based optimization features of Analysis Services.
2006-01-10
1,810 reads
By Brian Kelley
I am guilty as charged. The quote was in reference to how people argue...
By Steve Jones
Learn how to tie a bowline knot. Practice in the dark. With one hand....
By HeyMo0sh
As a DevOps practitioner, I’ve always focused on performance, scalability, and automation. But as...
Hi, I have a SQL Server instance where users connect to via Windows Authentication,...
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I have a query from a former DBA that we run on SQL Server 2025 to check on database metadata. This query references sys.sysaltfiles. I want to refactor this code to be more modern. Which DMV should I reference instead?
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