Andy returns to the Worst Practice series this week with a short article looking at how connection strings in applications affect what you see in sysprocesses. Perhaps less controversial (in our opinion) that some of the other worst practices, this is something easy to fix and definitely worth fixing! Read the article and post a comment - explore other points of view! Readers posting a comment will be entered in a drawing for a copy of the SQL Server 2000 Resource Kit.

SQLCentric

by Additional Articles

Other

Monitoring

This is an update to v1.2 of the product which does monitoring of your SQL servers. Looks like it checks service status, jobs, disk space, some other things. (Not Reviewed)

SQL Server Security: Why Security Is Important

by Brian Kelley

SQLServerCentral.com

Security

Regular columnist Brian Kelley reviews the real world impact that inadequate security can have by reviewing some recent incidents in the sql/security world. Very much worth reading, especially if you have credit card data.

Lots of Tables and a Little DMO

by Andy Warren

SQLServerCentral.com

.Net

Andy discusses a recent thread where a reader has very slow login tables with 2000 tables. After writing some DMO code (very handy by the way) and creating some objects, he can't track it down. Have any ideas?

MZTools - Addin for VB6

by Additional Articles

Other

Miscellaneous

Freeware! This add-in gives you some great extra features when working in VB6. It has a tab index setter, options to add a chunk of error handling code, a simple code analyzer that gives you some metrics, and my favorite - an option to identify unused code and variables. If you're still using VB6 it's worth trying.

Automated Trace File Collection

by Lowell Smith

SQLServerCentral.com

Monitoring

This article shows how to create a trace and capture it into a table using a combination of SQL and VBScript. Direct and to the point, you can read this and try it easily.

Where Do I Want To Go Today? - Upsert

by Steve Jones

SQLServerCentral.com

Where should SQL Server go in the future? What enhancements are needed? Steve Jones starts to explore his wish list for future versions of SQL Server.

Finding and Deleting Duplicate Data

by Chris Cubley

SQLServerCentral.com

Miscellaneous

Bad data is almost a given, but true duplicate data can really cause you some headaches. How do you remove all the duplicates and still leave a 'keeper' record? If you think procedural code it's not too hard, but can you do a set based solution? Chris shows you show!

Database Server Clash Revisited (Eweek)

by Additional Articles

ASPToday

Performance Tuning

This is a follow up article on the database comparison they did about 18 months ago.

Creating a Chart From a Table

by Masar Ivica

SQLServerCentral.com

Miscellaneous

New author! This article has a stored procedure that will generate an HTML document - as long as the table has the proper schema. If you try it, be sure to download the associated zip which has some images and the script for the stored procedure.

Worst Practice - Bad Connection Strings and Bad Info in Sysprocesses

SQLCentric

SQL Server Security: Why Security Is Important

Lots of Tables and a Little DMO

MZTools - Addin for VB6

Automated Trace File Collection

Where Do I Want To Go Today? - Upsert

Finding and Deleting Duplicate Data

Database Server Clash Revisited (Eweek)

Creating a Chart From a Table

Blogs

Using CAT for Testing of Data Agents

Are you getting value from your reporting?

The Book of Redgate: SQL Server Central

Forums

Backup to Immutable Storage

Microsoft Security Changes and SQL Server

Expanding into Print

Question of the Day

Backup to Immutable Storage