The .ni in the filenames refers to the "native image" version of the DLL. This is part of standard .NET functionality. Google for NGEN, JIT and MSIL.

Visual Studio can attach...

Check if other processes are running at the same time, which could cause blocking on the drive/file. Maybe a separate backup job (nothing to do with MSSQL) is locking files,...

Like several others posts, we have a mix;

Physical servers are generally dedicated to MSSQL (including Reporting & BI) and are reasonably powerful machines, often with local fast disks to...

The analogy could be extended: a chef-de-cuisine is *expected* to bring their own tools, and is automatically assumed to have a certain skill level and is treated with a commensurate...

Interesting and thought-provoking article.

In a nutshell, I think a task is fun if it is difficult yet solvable, expands your knowledge and broadens your experience. These tasks feel rewarding...

and you would be assuming that "ls" is correctly configured as an alias to "Get-ChildItem". Maybe only 99.994% correct.

As mentioned earlier by Alex, "dir" is an alias for "Get-ChildItem". It might, as a casual user, look like it produces the same results as the old DOS command of...

Alex gets a +1

It is a very important concept in the Powershell world; in this example, the "dir" alias doesn't just return a list of databases - it returns an...

An already very complex OS would become far more complex to manage, if patches were written for specific configurations. The possible variations would explode, along with the testing required. Nice...

Thanks for the question.

Absolutely agree that the documentation is poor and incomplete. The docs do make more sense if you really understand how an SPN works in a kerberos environment...

The idea behind this article, and the external link, was many developers don't want to be part of the testing cycle. They just want the results of the tests. And...

I find testing code, which I have not written, incredibly frustrating and fruitless. I'm sure I could learn better unit-testing skills, and ways of writing better test scenarios, but if...

Be careful that the prices really are "per core"; as Rudy has said, licences are sold in packs of 2; furthermore, the minimum licence is 4 cores so you may...

This link should provide all the info you need to compare the 2 drivers:

Updating an Application to SQL Server Native Client from MDAC

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms131035.aspx

SNAC was introduced all the way back in SQL Server 2005. "SQL Server Native Client combines the SQL OLE DB provider and the SQL ODBC driver into one native dynamic-link...