Creating Striped Backups - SQL School Video
This SQL School video shows how you can speed up your backup process by striping the backup across multiple disks. MVP Andy Warren narrates.
Monitoring Your Servers : Data Collection vs. Performance Advisor
An article sponsored by SQL Sentry that compares how the Data Collector in SQL Server 2008 and SQL Sentry's Performance Advisor can be used with your SQL Server. Written by MVP Aaron Bertrand.
Avoiding cursors with SQL Server 2005
Sometimes cursors are necessary when executing queries in SQL Server, but most of the time they can be avoided entirely. This article shows where cursors can traditionally be used, and how you can use features packaged in SQL Server 2005 to avoid them.
Being More Productive
This Friday's poll looks at your productivity. Is there some technology that has really helped you do your job better?
Does Upgrading to SQL Server 2008 Fit Your Business?
While SQL Server 2008 offers several new benefits for organizations, the trick is figuring out if those performance and availability advantages are truly worth the upgrade.
Full Transaction log
One of the common questions often asked online is how to respond to a full transaction log. New author Krishna Potlakayala brings us a few techniques for dealing with this.
Guest Editorial: Short Transactions
It is ingrained in many developers and DBAs to keep transactions in SQL Server "as short as possible". Why does this mindset exist? Does it imply a deep-seated lack of confidence in the scalability of SQL Server's locking and concurrency models?
Accessing results in a random order: Towards the automated Thank-you letter
Phil shows how 'CROSS APPLY' can be useful for writing thank-you letters or thinking of excuses as to why your project has failed....
Avoid Transact-SQL's Column Alias Limitations
A column alias seems like a great tool for referencing complex expressions, but SQL Server doesn't work that way. Learn a simple workaround.
Handling Service Broker Errors
The previous installment of the 'SQL Server 2005 Express Edition' series discussed using transactions to protect the integrity and consistency of Service Broker-based communication. Depending on the type of issue encountered by our code, the outcome might be different from expected. This article demonstrates a more robust approach to error handling and applies it to our target.
Blogs
Who Are You Doing It For?
By Brian Kelley
But as I've matured over the years, I came to realize that I needed...
Presenting Twice in May 2026
By alevyinroc
I will be presenting my latest session, Documenting Your Work for Worry-Free Vacations, in-person...
Finding the Next Sequence Value: #SQLNewBlogger
By Steve Jones
I saw a question asking about the next sequence value and decided to try...
Forums
DB Design Methods
I've read a few posts regarding what we use to design DB models and...
Auto Update Statistics not triggering on filtered indexes
I've got a table with 186,703,969 rows, about 300GB of data. There are several...
What is the difference between SQL Server and SQL Database?
I created a SQL Database in Azure Portal but I've just noticed it also...
Question of the Day
An Unusual Identity
What values are returned when I run this code?
CREATE TABLE dbo.IdentityTest2
(
id NUMERIC(10,0) IDENTITY(10,10) PRIMARY KEY,
somevalue VARCHAR(20)
)
GO
INSERT dbo.IdentityTest2
(
somevalue
)
VALUES
( 'Steve')
, ('Bill')
GO
SELECT top 10
id
FROM dbo.IdentityTest2 See possible answers