How to be a Good DBA - Strategy and Tactics
New Author! And long time reader - Jeffrey was site member #712, almost 3 years and 130,000 members ago! This article describes the skills needed to progress from junior to intermediate to senior DBA.
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
Measuring SQL Performance
One thing that often amazes me is that many SQL Server developers do not actually measure the performance of their queries. Many of them thought that you needed external tools, more or less complicated, to run against your server, and they did not have the time or inclination to learn and try these. This article will describe a couple of much easier methods of measuring performance of queries.
Blogs
Getting the SQL Server MCP Server Running
By Steve Jones
If you’ve wanted a SQL Server MCP server for your databases, it’s available. The...
Introducing azsql-migration-test: Test and Validate Azure SQL Database Migrations
Introducing azsql-migration-test, a small open-source CLI that validates your Azure SQL Database migrations against...
Rambling about Data on Wheels – origins, branding, expansion
By DataOnWheels
I have been asked many times about how the name “Data on Wheels” came...
Forums
Make It Routine
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DBCC CHECKDB Limits III
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CROSS APPLY Fundamentals: Part 1
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Question of the Day
DBCC CHECKDB Limits III
On SQL Server 2025, does DBCC CHECKDB support Memory-Optimized tables?
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