The only way to guarantee that your business rules are always enforced for all your data is by using constraints. Learn how to use them to enforce business rules in the database.
2007-06-05
3,215 reads
A view is most commonly thought of as a SELECT statement. Most developers will simply create a view to "group" complex SELECT statements for reuse within another view or stored procedures. It makes typing easier! But the really power of views is their ability to implement business rules.
2007-04-23
4,528 reads
The great debate over NULLs will probably never end. Should we use them in our databases? What meaning do they have? These are all
valid questions. In this article SQL Server expert Michael Coles takes a look at the problems that are inherent in eliminating NULLs completely from
a database.
2007-04-10
5,993 reads
In most relational database implementations. Update and Delete commands destroy the data that was there prior to their issue. However, some systems require that no information is ever physically deleted from or updated in the database. In this article, Arthur Fuller presents a solution to this requirement in the form of a Point-in-Time architecture: a database design which allows a user to recreate an image of the database as it existed at any previous point in time, without destroying the current image.
2007-02-28
3,723 reads
This is the fourth part of an ongoing series. The series is titled The Data Stewardship Approach to Data Governance. For information regarding future chapters, please use my contact information below. Previous articles were titled The Data Won't Govern Itself, Data Governance Is NOT a Methodology and The Tools of Data Governance.
2007-01-23
1,705 reads
This article describes how to implement a single refactoring within your database. It contains a worked example of the Move Column structural refactoring, whereby we move the Customer.Balance column to the Account table, a seemingly straightforward change to improve the database design.
2007-01-16
3,244 reads
In working on an existing database, DBAs often look to normalize tables and correct obvious flaws in design. Recently Andy Warren was working on a consulting project and realized that defaults would prevent many issues.
2007-12-28 (first published: 2007-01-04)
7,195 reads
2006-12-25
2,934 reads
Are you up to the latest design challenge? A great way to sharpen our analysis and modeling skills is to continuously address real-world scenarios. A modeling scenario with suggested solutions appears each month in this Design Challenge column. The scenario is emailed to more than 1,000 modelers. The responses are then consolidated into this column.
2006-10-16
2,039 reads
A seemingly never-ending battle in online database forums involves the question of whether or not database application development should involve the use of stored procedures.
2006-06-08
2,270 reads
By James Serra
An architecture scenario Imagine separate Sales, Finance, Shared Data, and Executive Analytics workspaces. Sales...
Security on your SQL Server is important. That doesn’t need any explaining. But where...
It’s that time of year again! EightKB is back on August 20th at 13:00...
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Backing Up a DMK
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In SQL Server 2025, I have a database with a Database Masker Key (DMK). I want to back up this key and keep a copy offline. When do I have to open this key before running the backup?
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