That depends on your existing skills & career goals. The fact that 450 is being retired this summer will not make it worthless. The skills you learn...

Perry Whittle (4/9/2013)

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If you want to remove a data file you must first empty it using

DBCC SHRINKFILE (logicalfilename or fileid, EMPTYFILE)

Delete the file and again run a log backup...

What is the RAM configuration for the production instance? The default setting could lead the SQL using too much RAM, which can trigger page file use. In Performance...

Reminds me of when I first started working with SQL Server. If you installed SQL 6.5 on Windows NT above a certain service pack level, you'd get a "not...

A larger company is more likely to have its security comprimised. If you have 100,000 employees or more, chances are there are people outside IT with the...

There's not just hacking to worry about. I've seen a situation where we have a Production server and a Test Server running a copy of the production database. We...

Yes, follow the procudure for building a new Windows Server Cluster and a new clustered instance of SQL Server. You will then have a single-node cluster. You can...

Are you using SSRS or Crystal Reports? I had this issue once with Crystal. First I used data grouping to summarize records for each day of...

Clare:

Are we talking about SQL2008 or SQL2008 R2? The location of the setup file that rebuilds the system databases is different for R2, and the procedure is not...

Occasionally I've seen stuck open transactions lead to unchecked log file growth. Try DBCC OPENTRAN on the DBs with oversized log files and see if there is an active...

Read the Skills Measured section in the link I sent and if you feel confident on those topics, take the tests! Let us know what you think of...

My thought was that once your server config, databases and security is set up, take a short downtime to copy all the system databases to a different drive. ...

70-461 is Querying Microsoft SQL Server 2012

Here's a summary:

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/exam.aspx?ID=70-461#fbid=NV3hLp0Fd64

I finally figured it out. The is one of those things Bill Gates once described as a "puzzle you're supposed to figure out." BOL doesn't...

There is a lot of debate over the value of certification and I'd like to add my 2 cents.

Like many in this field, I became a defacto-dba via...