I've been trying to get people out of the habit of using != but they're just not buying my "<> is more readable". Do you have another reason to...

If you have to build application code to scrub nulls then surely it would have been better not to have them in the first place. Surely allowing nulls just...

WHERE s.column >'' will be marginally more efficient than WHERE s.column<>''

Nulls are sometime necessary, for example if I have a DrivingConvictions table in a car insurance database I might have

DriverID

OffenceCode

PenaltyPoints

IllegalSubstanceReading

If...

This is on my list of "stupid things no-one in their right mind would try" and I apologise to any DBA for revealing how you do this.

EXEC sp_addlinkedserver 'ExcelSource',

...

BASIC = bodgers and simpletons incomprehensible cobblers.

Yes, though some of the newer SQL2008 options won't appear in the object browser tree.

With clustering you have 2 or more physical SQL Servers accessing a shared disk but appearing as one. In the event of one server being unavailable the cluster will...

At a guess you are using NVARCHAR and NCHAR rather than VARCHAR and CHAR fields.

the N... data type fields take twice the space of the VARCHAR/CHAR equivalents.

There is an added...

JJ B (10/25/2010)

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Hugo wrote:

I can think of a giant advantage--at least to my programs.

.....

I used to listen to the DBAs who advocated against surrogate keys for "link" tables....

If it is going to change then it isn't generally speaking a good candidate for a primary key.

The thing with Surrogate Keys is that they create uniqueness, they don't enforce...

I can't see anything that says that the figure returned will be reliable. Fast yes, blindingly so. Reliable.....not so sure.

If you are getting locking/blocking activity on a table and are not bothered by dirty reads then using the READUNCOMMITTED hint in the join may alleviate this.

If you are doing...

Have you considered writing a view and exposing that to Business Objects instead of letting it use the base tables?

How many tables are used in the joins for the query?

I was on a consultancy job where we were the co-ordinator of all the clients' vendors. It was agreed with the data centre manager and the client that my...

I'd hate to work in a single sex environment. I've found that someone (not necessarily a woman) who needs leeway for family matters tends to give back more than...