Common QA for deploying SQL Server in a SAN Environment
Detailed question/answer paper on deploying SQL Server in a Storage Area Network (SAN) Environment.
Decorum in the Forums
One of the most valuable features of SQLServerCentral.com is the discussion forums, where many a DBA has found an answer to their question. Most times on the same day! While we do not moderate the forums, there are still some rules for posting that we hope everyone will take a moment to read.
Indexes: An Overview and Maintenance for Performance
SQL Server for the most part will maintain itself, updating statistics, choosing optimal query plans, and requiring minimal maintenance to keep running. However to optain optimum performance, a real DBA needs to spend some time checking and tuning indexes, rebuilding them as fillfactors change. This new article from Desiree Harris looks at how you can perform some of these tasks to keep your server performing at the optimum level.
Oracle Link
SQL Server is the best RDBMS, at least according to the current thinking at SQLServerCentral.com, and is fully capable of meeting all of your database needs. However not all database systems run on SQL Server and it seems that we often see data from some other system being consolidated on SQL Server for additional processing or reporting. DTS usually handles the load, but there are times that you might want create a linked server to an Oracle system for updating individual rows. New author Adria
Get all from Table A that isn't in Table B
A common requirement when building a data warehouse is to be able to get all rows from a staging table where the business key is not in the dimension table. For example, I may want to get all rows from my STG_DATE table where the DateID is not in DIM_DATE.DateID.
Becoming More Productive
Taking a break from SQL Server and DTS, author Haidong Ji shares a few tips and tricks to becoming more productive, whether as a DBA or developer. These hints and tips could help you separate yourself from the pack come review, raise, or interview time.
Tokenizing a String Using PARSENAME
SQL Server string manipulation using T-SQL leaves lots to be desired. Many postings and complaints about T-SQL deal with strings, but there are ways to work with it. Author Eli Leiba brings us a way to split out portions of a string that contains tokens with a user defined function. Read on to see how this is accomplished and the code used to perform the splitting.
SQL Server Hardware Performance Checklist
We take a look at each of the major components of a SQL Server's hardware, and examine what can be done to help maximize the performance of your hardware.
SQL Server: Compare Query Results - Part I
In the Database administration world, it is often necessary to run a query on the production box and then run the same query on the QA or UAT box and compare the results. In this article, I would like to introduce a method that takes advantage of an MS-DOS batch file and SQL Server utility, BCP.exe, to compare the query results executed on two different servers.
Getting the Most out of SQL Server 2000's Query Analyzer, Part I
So you open up the tool a hundred times a day. In this article by Brian Kelley, he shows you how to get the most out of some of the known and unknown features.
Blogs
Shifting Mindsets: Why FinOps is Essential for Cloud Efficiency
By HeyMo0sh
As a DevOps practitioner, I’ve always focused on performance, scalability, and automation. But as...
March 2026 SQL Server Security Updates
By Brian Kelley
On Patch Tuesday, in addition to OS and Office security patches, Microsoft also released...
How Fabric Mirroring Transformed with SQL Server 2025
When mirroring was first released for Azure SQL Database, it used Change Data Capture...
Forums
Multiple Deployment Processes
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Multiple Deployment Processes
How to Use sqlpackage to Detect Schema Drift Between Azure SQL Databases
Comments posted to this topic are about the item How to Use sqlpackage to...
Upgrading Admin Queries
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Upgrading Admin Queries
Question of the Day
Upgrading Admin Queries
I have a query from a former DBA that we run on SQL Server 2025 to check on database metadata. This query references sys.sysaltfiles. I want to refactor this code to be more modern. Which DMV should I reference instead?
See possible answers