Temporarily Changing an Unknown Password of the sa Account
You are asked for the sa password for a SQL Server in order to perform a software upgrade. You, the DBA, don't know the password and it's not documented. Rodney Landrum provides a way out of this dilemma, demonstrating two techniques for temporarily changing the password, and then returning it to its previous unknown value.
Encryption: Not the End-All Fix for Data Privacy
Many state data-breach laws exempt encrypted data from PR-nightmare public-notice requirements, but don't let that fool you into thinking it's an easy answer to the data privacy challenge. Here's the lowdown on loopholes, caveats and options to consider when applying encryption.
SQL Agent - A Job Scheduler Framework
In this article, I'll show you how to create a generic scheduler that runs on a Windows Service. The scheduler will be able to accept pluggable actions that we can develop later implementing a custom interface.
Background
Finding Similar Data Using SQL Server Integration Services
SQL Server 2005 has greatly increased the capabilities of the platform and brought the capabilities for complex ETL packages to many businesses at an affordable cost. One of the very interesting transformations you can use in SSIS is the fuzzy grouping task and new author Brian Nordberg brings us a look at how you can use this.
DDL Replication in SQL Server 2000 and 2005
How schema changes can propogate in SQL Server 2005's Replication Architecture.
CLR: Digging into IDisposable
One of the major productivity benefits that the common language runtime (CLR) offers developers of managed code is that the garbage collector (GC) makes sure any memory allocated on the managed heap is cleaned up after it is no longer needed.
Scripting permissions using catalog views in SQL Server 2005
A nice How-To from one of the most respected SQL Server MVPs.
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Blogs
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...
The FinOps Lifecycle: From Budgeting to Reporting
By HeyMo0sh
Working in DevOps long enough teaches you two universal truths: That’s exactly why I...
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
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Hidden Heroes
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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?
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