The bottom line is simple.  Always set a primary key on every table.  It can be a single field, or a combination of fields, but in either case it should...

I'm curious as to how many folks use public web and sql hosts rather than hosting their own.  Our choice, and I would think many folks's choice would be to...

Do the users start out with the "dummy data" and then, after training move to the real data?  Can the dummy data be deleted after they are trained?  Does their...

This definitely deserves it's own forum.  Each company finds it's own naming convention, and the fact that everyone uses it is more important than what they chose to use.

Personally, I...

Nice Article.  I give it 5 stars.  It's obviously not "in-depth" - but not all articles need to be geared for experts.  I like it because it's well written and easy to...

Pretty simple in my mind - Never store XML in a database.  Use it to transport query results to folks who want it that way.  Period.  If you have control...

The proverbial "can't see the forest for the trees" concept.  Most of the time, we focus on our "main" jobs and don't step back to see what we can do...

Andy: Nice article.  I wish I'd had time to write a full article, our experiences were similar in some ways, different in others.

We provide a semi-public SQL Server for our...

I disagree with the last part about applications.  Perhaps I'm not the best programmer around, but I can't implement a custom binary protocol for our applications to use in twenty...

We actually have a small window style AC unit in the server room that is powered by an inverter and runs off the battery bank.  The AC Unit was about...

You have to explicitly close the object after creation before you destroy the Connection if you are going to update it in the same SP.

Simply add an 'Object.Close' line.

Been there, done...

Yes, I was referring to TCP/IP ports. I've seen the referenced KB article, that's how I knew you can do it in 2000. The client network utility in...

You simply Generate Scripts for the database and run them against the MSDE install. There are very few things you can't do in MSDE. They mostly involve server...

I didn't set out to do this, but I have the same server registered by it's machine name and it's IP address. I did it initially to reach the...

We have a very distributed app (individual companies hit a shared database hosted in our office - the database is a trading platform for work). We actually DO have...