I don't know if MS is overcharging, but they are certainly charging quite a bit. Upgrades, especially when you hit 2012, are big decisions with cost implications.

I do survey people,...

xsevensinzx (2/5/2016)

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It doesn't matter if your the high supreme dev master or the DBA. You follow the pipeline or you're not following the gospel of the team; this is a...

Eric M Russell (2/9/2016)

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...That's scary, though potentially not a problem. A number of states publish voter data as public records. A few might have restrictions on the use of that...

robert.sterbal 56890 (2/9/2016)

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Who exactly controls the information? What kind of roadblocks are they going to put up? The fact that I'm a voter needs to be public for all sorts...

Me too, which is why I wrote the question

It is indeed.

Always...

For reference data, some people are trying to move towards something like MDS, which gives you a central place to store and get data from that need standardization.

For non reference...

Do you understand what needs to be done, or do you need more info?

The certificate is protected by something inside SQL Server. Whatever that protection is must be unlocked to...

Perry Whittle (2/9/2016)

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Rich Mechaber (2/5/2016)

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If you use a third party tool, you will have to guess, test, and verify that what you thought you told the tool to do actually...

What's "it"?

Here is a ref for the IIF() statement: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms157328.aspx

I'm not sure what values aren't coming up as you expect, but if you have a problem with TC.Value not...

You do in order to decrypt the cert for the backup on the main instance.

Do you not know the password of the cert? Is it not in any VCS or...

Tony Lanterman (2/5/2016)

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For us, the push to get off SQL2005 over the last year hasn't been to get away from SQL2005 as much as to get off the Windows Server...

Yep, Jeff is right that you can use redirection from a command line.

If you need to do this inside SQL Server, you can use xp_cmdshell to call this in a...

roger.plowman (2/5/2016)

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Eric M Russell (2/3/2016)

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As a DBA, if I get a 2am call that a critical application is down, because a select in a stored procedure is missing a join...

FunkyDexter (2/5/2016)

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3. They usually required a change to be scripted. Really? I'm in SSMS with nice graphical designers and you would me to ignore all that gui goodness and...