Teambuilding and Bonding
Steve Jones attended a day out from the Red Gate offices recently and he talks about the value of those experiences.
Export data to an earlier SQL Server version
I have data in a SQL Server database that I need to get to an older version of SQL Server. I tried the backup and restore method, but received an error indicating that this wasn't allowed. I also tried to detach and attach the database, but that operation failed too. I understand that typical methods I use to move the database around don't work when I have to work with an earlier SQL Server version. What can I do to get the data out? This is a simple database and I want to spend a minimal amount of effort.
Setup SQL Server on Amazon RDS
Learn how you can set up a new SQL Server instance painlessly on Amazon's Relational Database Service (RDS)
SQL Server on RDS
Amazon now offers SQL Server 2008 R2 in their RDS service. It's an easy way to get working with SQL Server with a minimal investment.
Transaction Replication Latency Diagnosis
Identify resource bottlenecks in a stressed transaction replication topology using PERFMON/PAL and system wait stats
How to Create an Indicator and Gauge Report in SSRS
SQL Server Reporting Services provides several ways to analyze the data; a few of them are creating reports with indicators and Gauges. Indicators are minimal gauges that convey the state of a single data value at a glance and are mostly used to represent the state value of Key Performance Indicator (KPI, a measurable value which has business significance with a specific target or goal that indicates whether things are going good or bad).
The Colocated Dangers
An outage at SQLServerCentral reminded Steve Jones that it's not "if" a disaster will occur, but "when" it will occur that should have you preparing for a disaster at some point in the future.
Deciding between COALESCE and ISNULL in SQL Server
When writing T-SQL, a lot of developers use either COALESCE or ISNULL in order to provide a default value in cases where the input is NULL. The two functions do have quite different behavior and it is important to understand the qualitative differences between them when using them in your code.
An examination of bulk-logged recovery model
This article looks at the bulk-logged recovery model in depth and examines how it affects disaster recovery and logging.
Mobile Password Protection
Security is becoming more of an issue for mobile devices as we store and access more information on them all the time.
Blogs
Funny Money: #SQLNewBlogger
By Steve Jones
While wandering around the documentation looking for some Question of the Day topics, I...
Why Database AI Agents need Layers?
By Arun Sirpal
Third part in my Ai series with databases. When building AI solutions within the...
Un-Migrating From the Cloud: T-SQL Tuesday #199
By Steve Jones
This month we have a very interesting invitation from Koen Verbeeck. He has hosted...
Forums
How Do the Experts Become Experts?
Comments posted to this topic are about the item How Do the Experts Become...
Stairway to Reliable Database Deployments Level 4 – Preparing for Production Deployment
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Stairway to Reliable Database Deployments...
Secure Communications
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Secure Communications
Question of the Day
Secure Communications
As of June 2026, what is the best version of TLS to use with SQL Server?
See possible answers