Designing relational tables with subtypes
Relational tables often describe more than one type of real world entity. In this tip, Bob Watkins covers some things to think about when designing such tables.
Book Sale
We've put together some great new sale items for that SQL person on your Christmas list. Even if that person is you!
Service Pack 2 CTP
Service Pack 2 for SQL Server 2005 has been released as a CTP. Steve Jones installed it and has a few thoughts on this pre-release product.
Writing to a File Using the sp_OACreate Stored Procedure and OSQL: The
SQL Server has extensions to allow one to call COM based objects from within the server using T-SQL. While this is an interesting feature, it's may not be the best way to structure your applications due to performance reasons. New author Zach Nichter of ScalabilityExperts.com brings us an analysis of different ways of writing out to a file from within SQL Server. Read on to see the most efficient method of generating files on your server.
Monitoring File Sizes in SQL Server Part 4
Monitoring in the real world. Roy Carlson concludes his series on space monitoring for your SQL Servers with a real world example of how he found a problem and fixed it.
Think ANSI Standard SQL Is Fully Portable Between Databases? Think Aga
The same ANSI Standard SQL query can run against identical data on SQL Server and Oracle and return different results. So just because your application issues ANSI standard SQL, don't assume it's portable.
Monitoring File Sizes in SQL Server Part 3
Trending the size data for your databases can be crucial when ordering new hardware or just ensuring that you can handle the load. In Part 3, Roy Carlson looks at how you get the sizes needed for your instances into Excel and generate a chart for trending of this important piece of performance data.
Data Validation Sample
This video sample shows how the clustering algorithm can be used to automatically validate data.
Using Excel 2007 with Analysis Services
In this presentation, you'll see how you can use Excel 2007 to view data and create quick reports against data in Analysis Services. Then, you'll see how to conditionally format the data and apply rules to the data.
Monitoring File Sizes in SQL Server Part 2
Continuing with his series on monitoring space, Roy Carlson looks at checking the space in a folder to be sure your SQL Server databases never run out of storage.
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