SQL database control and deployment

If you develop SQL databases, you know how difficult it can be to promote from the development environment to production with any level of confidence that the databases are the same.

When you have upgrades, it’s difficult to identify changes as well, especially when there are multiple developers making changes to multiple databases. The problem is compounded if your target environment is a client’s system over which you have no control. It’s staggering to think about what can happen if there are 600-plus client systems that have various versions of your database.

Reporting Services 2005

Reporting Services has been enhanced in SQL Server 2005 and new author Anubhav Bansal brings us a how-to guide for editing your reports.

Finding Duplicate Indexes in Large SQL Server Databases

One important component of tuning a large, heavily used database, is to ensure that the tables are indexed optimally: enough indexing, but not too much indexing for the application you are running. There are rules of thumb about index tuning, but the entire issue is so complex that there's no "silver bullet" solution that will work for every case. However, in tuning indexes we can generally say that it's not a good idea to maintain duplicate indexes on the same data. SQL Server does not provide checks to prevent duplicate indexes from being created, as long as the names are different

Calling All Editing Buffs

Author Sean McCown would like to see some improvements in the editing tools that are available. He's proposed some changes and ideas to make a better tool. Join the discussion and see if you can get the SQL Server vendors to build something to make every DBA's job easier.

On The Road Again...Part I

An interesting interview with Raj Gill, SQL Server 2005 Roadshow Presenter by Robert Pearl. Get inside the mind of the co-founder of Scalability Experts.

Simple SQL CLR Integration

SQL Server 2005 brings many new features, but one of the most popular and hotly contested is the integration of the CLR inside the database server. New author Anajwala brings us a Hello World and an example stored procedure written using C#.

SMTP SQL Server Performance Alerts

Ensuring your SQL Server is performing well is a large part of any good DBA's job. It is not just writing good queries, but also monitoring your server and getting alerts on critical issues. Mike Metcalf has brought us a great article that shows how you can setup performance alerts and be notified via SMTP.

Are UDFs Harmful to SQL Server Performance?

SQL Server 2000 introduced user-defined functions (UDFs), and they were immediately hailed as a great tool for encapsulating repetitive code, as well as allowing you to perform more complicated processing directly in an SQL expression. On its face, that claim is valid. You can certainly improve readability and maintainability with UDFs. But cleaner code will be cold comfort if your queries bog down and lock up your server.

An Introduction to the Service Broker Part 2

One of the less exciting, but perhaps very powerful new features in SQL Server 2005, the Service Broker is an asynchronous communications method. MVP Srinivas Sampath brings us the second part of his series looking at what you can accomplish with a practical example.

How much backup is enough?

How much backup data should you keep around and what are the implications? Part 2 of a series looking at backups and their implications.