After being bitten by the blocking bug in the past where the index rebuild jobs were blocked by a connection from the application that wasn't closed, I implemented a standard...

ABSOLUTELY. Since the database is usually at the center of the technology world, I sometimes get help desk tickets that really have nothing to do with the database but because...

I have to jump on the bandwagon for this one as well. In the past, I've seen situations where triggers writing to linked servers caused severe production problems to the...

I wouldn't use database maintenance plans for something like this. Instead, I'd install custom database maintenance scripts into one of the system databases and use one or more scheduled jobs...

Your only real option is to find a company that specializes in failed hard disk data recovery and even that's not guaranteed to work. I've worked with one in the...

You don't need the word COLUMN.

ALTER TABLE passoword

ADD Domain varchar(50) NOT NULL

GO

If there's already data in the table, you won't be able to add the NOT NULL column unless you...

SQL 2008 backups are not backward compatible so you can't restore them to SQL 2005. If you're not using any new features of 2008, you might be able to export...

Try adding an exception in your desktop firewall for port 1433, then try the TELNET 1433 again from the client. If that works, re-register the server and choose TCP/IP as...

The first thing you need to do is verify connectivity using both the TCP/IP and named pipes protocol is in place between both the host and the target. For the...

The first thing you need to be looking into is why are you being asked to do this? Truncating the logs and shrinking the database every 30 minutes is not...

Definitely agree with GSquared on having the server side trace running. I almost always have one running on my key production systems and there are tons of articles available online...

I can think of one other benefit of being in full recovery and taking log backups regularly: If someone accidentally does something stupid in production like truncate the wrong table,...

My favorite topic to use in an interview is to have them discuss the differences between working with small databases and VLDB's, in excess of several hundred gig. When they...

How are you rebuilding your indexes? If you're using the database maintenance wizard, it will blindly rebuild indexes whether they need to be rebuilt or not. If that's the case,...

I've done that with database files dozens of times. As long as you stop SQL Server first, move the files to another temporary location, re-configure the E: drive and put...