Surrogate keys have their place, but by using natural keys where appropriate, you talk the domain language, in much the same way as you do by naming your database objects...

I loved it. It is so plausible

@lectroid10-sqlservercentral

I certainly agree that cascading constraints can be dangerous, and I agree that this is an enabler rather than a constraint so it doesn't really do 'what it says on...

@mister.magoo

Well spotted. That was sheer force of habit on my part.

Yes, it would be good to get some performance figures for really large tables. In the meantime, it is a good idea to be cautious. In the final table, indexes...

I passed on the request for a Service Broker Stairway to Steve and the rest of the team. I agree entirely, but the problem is in finding someone who would...

I realize that this isn't an article on transactions as such, but it is about how they are used Handling Constraint Violations and Errors in SQL Server[/url] (

I've worked for organisations that used these simple categories to define the backup regimes, security, availability, location etc. ...

Private: - merely for the productivity of a single...

@gary Varga

I think there is more of a problem here. Last year, I sat in a day seminar on Continuous Integration given by a director of a well-known...

@Jonathan.hickford

The Default Trace method is better where you are not allowed any intrusion of code into the system for monitoring purposes, or if you need to catch DDL...

You can rebuild the heap and the nonclustered indexes, and update statistics, by creating and then dropping the clustered index, using the ALTER TABLE ... REBUILD or by changing...

@Solomon Rutzky

I'm happy with SQL CLR too. My editorial was more to speculate as to why it wasn't adopted with the enthusiasm that Microsoft initially expected. I suspect that...

BoxStarter would only be useful for commissioning a new server or VM - installing all the software ,but it wouldn't directly help a deployment. If I had no budget...

We use only the 2 part name and let the synonyms do the rest of the work. Do you know of a way to do a SELECT from a LinkedServer...

The HAVING clause can only be used where there is a GROUP BY or where you have an aggregation. What's more, you can only, and would only want to, use...