Planning the Development, Testing, Staging, and Production Environments for SQL Server part 1.

When asked about how to plan the ideal dev, test, staging and production SQL Server environments it’s easy to get...

Shredding a simple xml structure to a single row flat table

I was helping out a user on the forums the other day where they were asking questions about shredding an...

Slowing Changing Dimension (SCD) demystified – Part 3

I am wrapping up this series by finally considering the rarely used type 3 SCD.
( i.e.  in most business scenarios)
Unlike...

The Tally Table and Expanding Rows

Suppose you had some data like this:
Class           Limit
————— ———–
Calculus        5
History         4
Physics         2
But what you really want is this:

Class          ...

Being careful in SSAS to not make a cube/dimension unprocessed

A big headache in SSAS, especially when dealing with a large cube, is making a change that when deployed, causes...

BIxPress 3.5–Now With More Awesome!

Pragmatic Works has now released version 3.5 of the award-winning BIxPress software! For those not familiar with BIxPress it’s a...

Denali – Day 21: Security

Denali – Day 21: Security

 
Security wise Microsoft sql server is going great and on compare with other RDBMS in the market...

Is Dynamic T-SQL a Good Design Pattern?

In a recent discussion it was suggested to me that not only is dynamic T-SQL useful for things like catch-all...

SQL Server 2008 SP3 Cumulative Update 5 Released

Microsoft has released two new Cumulative Updates for SQL Server 2008 today. The first one is SQL Server 2008 SP3...

SQL Server 2012 Certifications Revamped

Reprinted from my Database Weekly editorial.
Forget what you thought you knew about SQL Server certification, as Microsoft has completely redesigned...