SQLServerCentral Article

Eliminating Cursors

T-SQL does some things wonderfully, but cursors are the bane of the language, often causing performance issues. Changing your queries around to remove cursors can be tricky and new author Kamran Ali brings us one technique he has used to dramatically improve performance.

External Article

Close these Loopholes - Reproduce Database Errors

This is the final part of Alex's ground-breaking series on unit-testing Transact-SQL code. Here, he shows how you can test the way that your application handles database-related errors such as constraint-violations or deadlocks. With a properly-constructed test-harness you can ensure that the end-user need never see the apparent gobbledegook of database system error messages, and that they are properly and robustly handled by the application.

External Article

Security Overview for Database Administrators

SQL Server 2008 is secure by design, default, and deployment. Microsoft is committed to communicating information about threats, countermeasures, and security enhancements as necessary to keep your data as secure as possible. This paper covers some of the most important security features in SQL Server 2008. It tells you how, as an administrator, you can install SQL Server securely and keep it that way, even as applications and users make use of the data stored within.

Blogs

A New Word: los vidados

By

los vidados – n. the half-remembered acquaintances you knew years ago, who you might...

In-Person CISA Training – April 13-16, 2026

By

I will be leading an in-person Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) exam prep class...

EightKB 2026

By

EightKB is back again for 2026! The biggest online SQL Server internals conference is...

Read the latest Blogs

Forums

query to track time spent on individual tasks in SSIS

By water490

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

By Terry Jago

Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Server Transactional Replication from...

Hidden Heroes

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Hidden Heroes

Visit the forum

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