Best Practice for renaming a SQL Server Database

One of the Junior SQL Server Database Administrator in my company approached me yesterday with a dilemma. He was assigned a task to rename few of the databases in Beta and Production environments; the reason being the database name was based on some other project that is no longer relevant to the data which is presently stored within the database. At first I started to tell him, but figured it would be smarter to document the same and share the information.

Finding the Compatibility Level

How to Connect to a SQL 2005 Server When You Are Completely Locked Out

If you need to connect to a SQL server and don't have the 'sa' password plus the builtin\administrators account has been removed then Rudy Panigas shows us what you need to know.

View Errors in the Default Trace

Returns records with errors from the default trace ordered by most recent first

Wait for Mirror treshold

This procedure checks if a mirror treshold exists and wait until this treshold is cleared or after a specified time.

Custom cleanup procedure for backup files

There are times when maintenance plan is too simple to do the job, and SSIS is unreachable for you. Here is a simple stored procedure to help you.

The Ultimate Index-Less Foreign-Key Finder

Searches for foreign key constraints that don't have fully matching indexes. The best partial matching indexes are outputted with MatchCounts and column comparisons.

Find SQL Server Error Log Path

Script to Find SQL Server Error Log Path

Part 2: Why you should be using the Full Recovery Model

Part 2 of the SQL Server Essentials Series looks at why you should be using the Full Recovery Model to protect your data assets.

Managing Free Space

A new article from Paul Els looks at managing free space on your database servers by finding detached databases and old backup files.