PowerPivot
A new direction in BI, with a new flagship interface for Business Intelligence from Microsoft. Steve Jones talks a little about the back story he heard from Microsoft.
PowerPivot
A new direction in BI, with a new flagship interface for Business Intelligence from Microsoft. Steve Jones talks a little about the back story he heard from Microsoft.
SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) - Design Best Practices
In the previous tips (SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) - Best Practices - Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3) of this series I briefly talked about SSIS and few of the best practices to consider while designing SSIS packages. Continuing on this path I am going to discuss some more best practices of SSIS package design, how you can use lookup transformations and what considerations you need to take, the impact of implicit type cast in SSIS, changes in SSIS 2008 internal system tables and stored procedures and finally some general guidelines.
TSQL Challenge 19 - Working with consolidated calculations on hierarchical structures
This challenge involves generating an organizational hierarchy and calculating the total orders created by each employee and his/her subordinates. It involves a number of challenges such as generating a resultset in the correct hierarchical form, calculating the orders created by each employee and his/her subordinates and finally calculating the total orders created by self and all the subordinates.
What SQL Statements Are Currently Executing?
This article describes a utility that allows you to identify what SQL statements are currently executing.
Comparing cursor vs. WHILE loop performance in SQL Server 2008
There are situations in which you need to individually handle each row in a result set. SQL Server 2008 provides a minimal set of tools — cursors and WHILE loops — to accomplish this task. I'll take a closer look at each option and explain why it's difficult to pinpoint which is better in terms of performance.
Fundamentals of Storage Systems – Disk Controllers, Host Bus Adapters, and Interfaces
We have covered the Hard Disk and the System Bus. This time around we will cover disk controllers and host...
SQL Azure with ASP Dot Net
Don Schlichting demonstrates the development of a SQL Azure ASP Dot Net application, leveraging our existing TSQL and Dot Net skills.
Get Out of Your Comfort Zone!
A guest editorial from Andy Warren today looks to inspire you with a few thoughts about how you might force yourself to grow a little next year.
SSIS Package Credentials
What do you do when you run an SSIS package and it works, but it fails when scheduled? You might have a credential problem. Robert Pearl brings us a solution to a cryptic message that prevents you from scheduling a package.
Blogs
Microsoft Fabric OneLake Shortcuts: When to Use Them and When Not To
By James Serra
An architecture scenario Imagine separate Sales, Finance, Shared Data, and Executive Analytics workspaces. Sales...
SQL Server Security Hardening Guide Using the DoD STIG Checklist
Security on your SQL Server is important. That doesn’t need any explaining. But where...
EightKB 2026: Registration is Open!
It’s that time of year again! EightKB is back on August 20th at 13:00...
Forums
Backing Up a DMK
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BIT_COUNT in SQL Server
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Question of the Day
Backing Up a DMK
In SQL Server 2025, I have a database with a Database Masker Key (DMK). I want to back up this key and keep a copy offline. When do I have to open this key before running the backup?
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