Creating an End-to-End Package
In this sample chapter, you'll get a full tutorial on how to create an end-to-end SSIS package including transformation, looping and archiving of files.
Cursors and embedded SQL
In the days when I contentedly cut procedural code, I was puzzled by the visceral rages of the database specialists; they were like the ship’s cook occasionally going berserk with a meat-cleaver. After I switched to database work, I realized why.”
Starting and Stopping SQL Server Part 4
Continuing with his series on working with SQL Server, Andy Warren looks at how long it can take to start or restart the services and why.
Using ITWIZ.EXE to Automate Index Analysis
This process uses ITWIZ.EXE the command line version of the Index Tuning Wizard. SQL trace file information is stored in a table on production then transferred to a non-production server. ITWIZ is then run against the transferred trace data resulting in a UNICODE SQL script. This script has index creation and deletion information as well as script parameters in a remarks section.
Male, Female and The Other One (NULL)
When programming in T-SQL, the impact of NULL values can be severe in many cases, especially aggregates. New Author Peter Ward brings us a great explanation on how NULLs can impact things like SUM operations.
How to Set Up a SQL Server Stress Test Environment in 8 Steps: Lessons
This article is the third in a series of four where I share my findings on baselining, monitoring, stress testing and performance tuning. It builds on the foundations of my previous articles on baselining and monitoring.
SQL Server 2005 Integration Services, Part 2: Developing Custom Compon
The first phase of Project REAL included the migration of existing SQL Server 2000 DTS packages to SQL Server 2005 Integration Services (SSIS) for a large electronic retailer. One source of information for the data warehouse was from TLog files, which contained data from point-of-sale cash registers in stores. TLog files store data in packed decimal format. To extract and transform this data into a format suitable for loading into the relational data warehouse tables, it was necessary to unpack and parse the files. To achieve this, custom pipeline components were implemented to read and transform the data by extending the SSIS object model. This paper discusses what we learned while implementing the pipeline components for extracting and parsing data from the TLog parser
Detecting Performance Issues With Sysprocesses
Analyzing and detecting performance problems is a big part of a DBA's job and also one of the more difficult ones to learn. New author Terry Troisi brings us a few things that you can use the next time your server spikes to 100% CPU.
Analysis Services 2005 protocol - XMLA over TCP/IP
It has been widely publicized that Analysis Services 2005 uses XML for Analysis 1.1 (XMLA) as its only network protocol for communication between client and server. XMLA is standard public protocol defined by XMLA council and full description can be found at www.xmla.org
Blogs
ADF Pipeline Debugging Fails with BadRequest – The Sequel
A while ago I blogged about a use case where a pipeline fails during...
Why I stopped using MCP for AI coding stuff
By HeyMo0sh
Something has shifted quietly in 2026. The developers I know/respect—the ones actually shipping, not...
AI: Blog a Day – Day 5: Notebooks, Hugging face models and Fine Tuning
By Vinay Thakur
Continuing from Day 4 where we learned Encoder, Decoder, and Attention Mechanism, today we...
Forums
Dynamic Unpivot
I have a table I didn't design that has tons of repeating groups in...
Writing as an Art and a Job
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String Similarity II
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Question of the Day
String Similarity II
What is the range for the result from the EDIT_DISTANCE_SIMILARITY() function in SQL Server 2025?
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