Worst Practices - Making On-The-Fly Changes
Continuing with our worst practices series, Steve Jones looks at another administrative no-no. Making a change to your live system on the fly.
Interview with David Gugick, SQL Server Performance Expert
David Gugick, SQL Server performance expert and software developer, provides over 100 tips on how to boost SQL Server performance.
Who Needs Change Management?
You have spent thousands of dollars on that cool technology; clustering, redundant controllers, redundant disks, redundant power supplies, redundant NIC cards, multiple network drops, fancy tape backup devices and the latest and greatest tape technology. You are all set. There is no way your going to have downtime. Right?
Another Disaster (Almost)
Andy had a semi-disaster similar to the one he wrote about last year. Interesting to see the kinds of problems that happen to other people. This article raises some interesting points that are outside the scope of basic disaster recovery, looking at how/when to move databases to a different server and how to reduce the server load dynamically.
A Normalization Primer
For most DBAs, normalization is an understood concept, a bread and butter bit of knowledge. However, it is not at all unusual to review a database design by a development group for an OLTP (OnLine Transaction Processing) environment and find that the schema chosen is anything but properly normalized. This article by Brian Kelley will give you the core knowledge to data model.
Building a Demo System - Part 3
Continuing on looking at demo servers, this article presents an interesting solution to ensuring consistent demos that was deployed out in the field for a client company.
Defend Your Code with Top Ten Security Tips Every Developer Must Know
Microsoft tells us why it's so important to defend your code against malicious attacks.
Case Study: Importing New Data Without Emptying Existing Tables
The challenge for Robert Marda was to devise a way to keep the data available at all times while importing the new data, detect if a full or daily update was received and run appropriate data pumps, put in sufficient fail safes to ensure bad data would not get imported, and to make the process automatic including notification to pagers upon failure. Robert shows you how he did it here.
Default Values and Named Parameters for Stored Procs
Are you using default values for your parameters? Using named parameters when you call the proc or passing the values by ordinal? Should you be? Andy thinks 6 out of 10 of our readers will agree with his point of view, we'll be a little more conservative and guess that 5 of out 10 will be closer.
The Best of SQLServerCentral.com 2002
Steve discusses a potential new project we have in the works. We'd appreciate as many comments and votes on this one as possible.
Blogs
Git forked
Forgive me for the title. Mentally I’m 12. When I started my current day...
Setting FK Constraints in Data Modeler
By Steve Jones
One of the things a customer asked recently about Redgate Data Modeler was how...
Webinar: Navigating the Database Landscape in 2026
By Steve Jones
For a number of years, we’ve produced the State of the Database Landscape report,...
Forums
Purpose of the Rice Purity Test
The main purpose of the Rice Purity Test is entertainment and self reflection. Many...
Expanding into Print
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Expanding into Print
Downtime Caused by the Postgres Transaction ID Wraparound Problem
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Downtime Caused by the Postgres...
Question of the Day
The String Distance I
In SQL Server 2025, what is returned by this code:
SELECT EDIT_DISTANCE('Steve', 'Stan')
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