Interesting to see in action that uncommitted transactions still affect the identity values. Nice.

We use LogShipping as part of DR running SQL 2K8. There have been rumblings from some quaters to use filestreaming for document storage. If so, then having read this post...

Good question, nice and easy. I like them ones 🙂

Check that you have Remote Procedure Calls enabled in your linked server properties. In SSMS, expand Server -> Server Objects ->Linked Servers -> Right Click on your linked server and...

Fascinating. Thanks

Thats a good point, well said. You'd want to judge each recommendation on its own merits and ideally apply in a test/dev environment first to assess its impact.

What if you have numerous employees with (for example) the first name of "steve" in both tables? Any join on part of a string (or substring) is going to bring...

You could also create a workload trace file and run it through the Database tuning Adviser

What was the rest of the error msg? Check you have enabled sql to allow remote connections, and check the configuration manager has the tcp/ip, shared memory, and named pipes...

Great stuff. Looking forward to part 2 on Thursday.

Can you fire the Job in day time and run a trace at the same time to see what's happening?

Yes

You create a clustered index in the same way you create a non clustered index. But you need to be aware of the differences between them (there are plenty of...

In server properties -> Connections, look for "Require Distributed Transactions for server to server communication" and enable (on both servers)

If no records is found based on your WHERE clause, you'll get a null value. But as stated above, do a select / print on that variable afterwards to confirm