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Arriving at Database Growth Factor in SQL Server 2000

It is highly recommended that you not rely on system tables in your application as the values and meanings many change between versions. But for an experienced person that digs into the system often and needs quick answers, these system tables may be a great source of information. Suresh Maganti brings us his recent adventure in finding a reliable way to determine the growth factor of a database.

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DTS Polling

Lots of packages exist that will import data files for you, even if you do not know the file name ahead of time. But most of them expect the files to be there. New author Andre Quitta brings us a technique he has for checking to see if the files are even there before importing them.

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Secrets of successful IT projects

Some time ago, I worked on a team that was attempting to define an IT strategy for a large multinational company. Management incorrectly thought the company was unique in that it had a high number of failed IT projects. In fact, only one in four IT projects can be termed successful, if the benchmarks of success are adherence to scheduled completion time and budget, and realization of the project goal, whether that be saving money, growing the business, or what have you. I have to explain this because many of you may never have come across one.

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Using SQL Server 2005 sqlcmd Utility

SQL Server 2005 provides some new command line utilities. One such utility is "sqlcmd". The sqlcmd utility is used to run adhoc queries interactively from a command prompt window, or can be used to execute a script containing T-SQL statements. The sqlcmd utility is a great improvement over osql and isql of older releases of SQL Server. In this article, I will explain some of the features this new command line utility brings to administering SQL Server.

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Question of the Day

Adding and Dropping Columns I

I have this table in my SQL Server 2022 database:

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[CityList]
(
[CityNameID] [int] NOT NULL IDENTITY(1, 1),
[CityName] [varchar] (30) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS NULL
) ON [PRIMARY]
GO
I decide to add two new columns for the StateProvince and Country. What code should I use?

See possible answers