SQLServerCentral Article

Considerations for Data Warehousing

What type of things do you need to look at when setting up a data warehouse? Hardware is a big one as well as the settings for the server, which may be substantially different than transactional systems most DBAs work with. Warehousing expert Vincent Rainardi brings us the next installment in his data warehousing series with some advice on what you should be looking for.

Technical Article

XBRL or Master Data Management?

Master data management (MDM) and eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) are two key technologies that promise to address important information management issues. Ventana Research believes both will enable companies to reduce the cost, time and effort needed to collect, analyze and use information, whether for visibility, decision support or process execution. Some observers may see them as competing approaches, but in practice each has capabilities best suited to some applications and not others. Even where they overlap, the two may not be mutually exclusive. We advise companies that have not yet begun investigating XBRL and MDM to do so immediately, and all organizations should begin developing skills in using them.

SQLServerCentral Article

The Joy of Numbers

Numbers are fascinating concepts in all types of mathematics, but they can be very helpful as well in your SQL Server queries. Guru Michael Coles brings us a look at how a numbers table can you and includes a bunch of code for both SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005.

Technical Article

Backup Basics Part 3: General Tips for a Backup Strategy

Knowing how to configure backup applications and select backup media is half the battle of designing a successful backup strategy. The other half is choosing how and when to back up the specific pieces of data that are stored on your servers, share points, and workstations. In this final article of his series on backup basics for new technicians and administrators, Ryan Faas offers some suggestions to help you make these important decisions.

External Article

Monitoring SQL Servers Availability

How many SQL Server instances are you running? Do you ever have customers calling you stating that their application is not working, then when you research the problem you find that the instance that supports their application is unavailable? Have you ever had someone mistakenly shutdown the SQL Agent service and forget to restart it, causing a number of scheduled jobs to not be run? One of the tasks of a DBA is to monitor the availability of all SQL Server instances and services.

Blogs

Learn Better: Pause to Review More

By

If you want to learn better, pause more in your learning to intentionally review.

Azure SQL Managed Instance Next-Gen: Bring on the IOPS

By

If you’ve used Azure SQL Managed Instance General Purpose, you know the drill: to...

SQL, MDX, DAX – the languages of data

By

Ramblings of a retired data architect Let me start by saying that I have...

Read the latest Blogs

Forums

Two foreign keys to the same table. Can't cascade deletes.

By FunkyDexter

Not sure if this is really a relational theory question but it seems about...

Connecting Power BI to SSAS and effective user not working

By Paul Hernández

Hi everyone, Below is a consolidated summary of what we validated Architecture & data...

High Availability setup - has anyone seen this method?

By Paul Lancaster

Hi all, I recently moved to a new employer who have their HA setup...

Visit the forum

Question of the Day

Encoding URLs

I have this data in a SQL Server 2025 table:

CREATE TABLE Response
( ResponseID INT NOT NULL CONSTRAINT ResponsePK PRIMARY KEY
, ResponseVal VARBINARY(5000)
)
GO
If I want to get a value from this table that I can add to a URL in a browser, which of these code items produces a result I can use?

See possible answers