The Backup Myth (WMV)
Running backups is enough for disaster recovery, right? That's a myth that could get you into trouble. Steve Jones explains there's more that's needed.
A New MVP
Tony Davis offers his congratulations on a new MVP at SQLServerCentral.com and DatabaseWeekly.com.
Myths
Every profession has its share of myths about how it works. IT might have more than its share and Steve Jones comments on a few of them.
Searching Syscomments Accurately
As a SQL Server DBA you should know that your code is stored in syscomments by default. While most DBAs use version control systems, there are times you might want to look through the code on the server for comparison purposes. Robert Cary brings us an article on how you can do this in 2000 and 2005.
Building a Localized Report on a SQL Server 2005 Analysis Service Cube Data Source
Learn how to use an Analysis Services cube as a data source by using parameterized MDX queries, as well as how to localize label strings in a report, in SQL Server 2005.
SQL Server 2005 Encryption types
SQL Server 2005 provides four methods of encryption. Part one of this article covers encryption and decryption by passphrase.
College Life
Life at college is good. It's a time in many people's lives that they'll never forget. Steve Jones asks if you'd want to go back to your adult roots.
Predeployment I/O Best Practices
The I/O system is important to the performance of SQL Server. When configuring a new server for SQL Server or when adding or modifying the disk configuration of an existing system, it is good practice to determine the capacity of the I/O subsystem prior to deploying SQL Server. This white paper discusses validating and determining the capacity of an I/O subsystem. A number of tools are available for performing this type of testing. This white paper focuses on the SQLIO.exe tool, but also compares all available tools. It also covers basic I/O configuration best practices for SQL Server 2005.
Set Functions: The .AllMembers Function
Business Intelligence Architect Bill Pearson introduces the useful .AllMembers function, reinforcing the basic concepts, as always, with hands-on practice examples.
Blogs
Presenting with Visual Studio Code
A while back I wrote a quick post on setting up key mappings in...
Advice I Like: In 100 Years
By Steve Jones
In 100 years a lot of what we take to be true now will...
dataMinds Saturday 2026 – Slides
At Saturday the 21st of February I’m presenting an introduction to dimensional modelling at...
Forums
AllocationType as ROW_OVERFLOW_DATA
Hello, I inherited a number of tables with like 20-30 column using nvarchar(256) in...
is it true we cant debug c# scripts in ssis anymore under vs
Hi, i'm running vs2022. I'm trying out a c# script that i'd like to...
Question of the Day
Missing the Jaro Winkler Distance
I upgraded a SQL Server 2019 instance to SQL Server 2025. I wanted to test the fuzzy string search functions. I run this code:
SELECT JARO_WINKLER_DISTANCE('tim', 'tom')
I get this error message:Msg 195, Level 15, State 10, Line 1 'JARO_WINKLER_DISTANCE' is not a recognized built-in function name.What is wrong? See possible answers