Dead Data
What happens to the data of a company if it goes out of business? Steve Jones has a little experience and says it might not be as simple as you think.
Trace File Source Adapter
The Trace File Source adapter is a useful addition to your SSIS toolbox. It allows you to read 2005 and 2008 profiler traces stored as .trc files and read them into the Data Flow. From there you can perform filtering and analysis using the power of SSIS
Retaining historical index usage statistics for SQL Server
In this three-part series I'll look at what you can do to persist this data so you don't find yourself waiting for usage stats to compile over a reasonable period of time just so you can harness the power of the indexing DMOs in your performance tuning process.
Searching for tasks with code – Executables and Event Handlers
Searching packages or just enumerating through all tasks is not quite as straightforward as it may first appear, mainly because of the way you can nest tasks within other containers. You can see this illustrated in the sample package below where I have used several sequence containers and loops.
What is Twitter?
I saw an interesting blog post from Andy Leonard ( @AndyLeonard ) recently on what he thought Twitter was. I'd started my own post here, with some thoughts, and had to go back and rewrite things (Thanks, Andy!). He got me thinking, and I agree, it's...
Happy Memorial Day 2009
Steve Jones hopes you have a wonderful Memorial Day and brings you a blooper reel to pass the time if you are one of those people stuck working today.
The Real SQL Server Experts
T-SQL is not a language to be admired from a distance for its grace, sophistication and integrity. It is a tool designed to allow "normal" developers and DBAs to build database business applications as smoothly and efficiently as possible.
Starting Conversations - Part 5
I just finished up my third coaching call with Don Gabor (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4) and I think I'm gaining a little ground, but still finding that I have a lot to learn.
Blogs
A New Word: los vidados
By Steve Jones
los vidados – n. the half-remembered acquaintances you knew years ago, who you might...
In-Person CISA Training – April 13-16, 2026
By Brian Kelley
I will be leading an in-person Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) exam prep class...
EightKB 2026
EightKB is back again for 2026! The biggest online SQL Server internals conference is...
Forums
query to track time spent on individual tasks in SSIS
Hi everyone I am looking at building a query to determine how much time...
SQL Server Transactional Replication from Always On Availability Groups to Azure SQL Database
Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Server Transactional Replication from...
Hidden Heroes
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Hidden Heroes
Question of the Day
Identities and Sequences I
When thinking of the Identity property for auto incrementing columns and sequences for the same action, which are explicitly linked to increment a number in a table when a new row is added?
See possible answers