What's SQLServerCental.com All About
With some recent hubub and questions, Steve Jones decided to spend a few moments welcoming everyone to the community and give some background on what this site is all about.
Scheduled MS Cluster Failovers using Automation Server Objects
SQL Server clusters are great tools to ensure that your servers are highly available. However there are some times when you'll want to manually perform a failover for testing, maintenance, etc. New author Anthony Bressi brings you a technique and code to allow you to use VB 6.0 to build a small program to automatically do this.
An Enterprise-Class Plan for Securing Microsoft SQL Server Databases
If you are running Microsoft SQL Server databases to support critical enterprise applications, you are part of a growing trend. The cost/performance benefits of Microsoft SQL Server on the Microsoft Windows NT and Windows 2000 platforms have fueled the growth of SQL Server as a platform for enterprise-class applications.
All About Transactions - Part 3
Transactions in SQL Server are probably no more complicated than those in other RDBMS products, which is to say they are fairly complex. Don Peterson continues with part 3 of his series and takes a look at transaction isolation levels and how they interact with multiple connections and their impact on locking.
MDX Essentials: Logical Functions: The IsEmpty() Function
This is the twenty-fifth article of the series, MDX Essentials. The series is designed to provide hands-on application of the fundamentals of the Multidimensional Expressions (MDX) language, with each tutorial progressively adding features designed to meet specific real-world needs.
Unifed Database Toolkit - Connection Definition
SQL Server 2000 is easy to administer relative to other RDBMS, but there is still plenty of room for improvement. Author Andre Vigneau has built a database toolkit to allow him to manage his cross platform databases. This is the second article in his series and deals with establishing connections to any database platform.
Submitting A Stored Procedure Asynchronously
Have you ever wondered if you could start the execution of a stored procedure (SP) asynchronously from some T-SQL code? What I mean is starting the SP in the background and continuing on with the next line of code in your T-SQL script without waiting for the execution of the SP to complete. If so, then this article might be of some interest to you.
Moving System Databases - A Checklist
The default location for the SQL Server system databases doesn't always meet the standards of many organizations. Author Chris Hedgate has taken the time to put together a short checklist on how you can move the master, msdb, model, and tempdb databases easily.
"sysperfinfo" in SQL Server
The system table, "sysperfinfo," is the representation of the internal performance counters of SQL Server. This article demonstrates how to retrieve and store information from "sysperfinfo" to a CSV file, so that it can be analyzed.
Reduce Database RoundTrips Using XML
SQL Server 2000 added XML support to allow some basiuc manipulation of XML data. At the time, XML was a hot buzzword in the computer industry and there were lots of applications being written to use XML. While the buzz has cooled, Jon Winer still uses XML in some interesting ways to make his life easier and his applications more rebust. Here he brings us a technique he's used to reduce the number of round trips required by an application.
Blogs
Monday Monitor Tips: Intelligent Alert Thresholds
By Steve Jones
At the recent Redgate Summit in Chicago, I demo’d (lightly) the ML based Alert...
A New Word: los vidados
By Steve Jones
los vidados – n. the half-remembered acquaintances you knew years ago, who you might...
In-Person CISA Training – April 13-16, 2026
By Brian Kelley
I will be leading an in-person Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) exam prep class...
Forums
String_agg not working as needed
I'm trying to get this string_agg to put all the 'comments' into one result...
Vectors in SQL Server 2025
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Vectors in SQL Server 2025
Odd Sequences
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Odd Sequences
Question of the Day
Odd Sequences
What values are returned from this code?
CREATE SEQUENCE NumericSequence
AS NUMERIC(5,1)
START WITH 1.0
INCREMENT BY 0.1;
GO
SELECT NEXT VALUE FOR NumericSequence
GO
SELECT NEXT VALUE FOR NumericSequence
GO See possible answers