The Test of Time
A change here at SQLServerCentral.com and Steve Jones gives some thoughts on the impact of this for the future.
Designing relational tables with subtypes
Relational tables often describe more than one type of real world entity. In this tip, Bob Watkins covers some things to think about when designing such tables.
Book Sale
We've put together some great new sale items for that SQL person on your Christmas list. Even if that person is you!
Service Pack 2 CTP
Service Pack 2 for SQL Server 2005 has been released as a CTP. Steve Jones installed it and has a few thoughts on this pre-release product.
Writing to a File Using the sp_OACreate Stored Procedure and OSQL: The
SQL Server has extensions to allow one to call COM based objects from within the server using T-SQL. While this is an interesting feature, it's may not be the best way to structure your applications due to performance reasons. New author Zach Nichter of ScalabilityExperts.com brings us an analysis of different ways of writing out to a file from within SQL Server. Read on to see the most efficient method of generating files on your server.
Monitoring File Sizes in SQL Server Part 4
Monitoring in the real world. Roy Carlson concludes his series on space monitoring for your SQL Servers with a real world example of how he found a problem and fixed it.
Think ANSI Standard SQL Is Fully Portable Between Databases? Think Aga
The same ANSI Standard SQL query can run against identical data on SQL Server and Oracle and return different results. So just because your application issues ANSI standard SQL, don't assume it's portable.
Monitoring File Sizes in SQL Server Part 3
Trending the size data for your databases can be crucial when ordering new hardware or just ensuring that you can handle the load. In Part 3, Roy Carlson looks at how you get the sizes needed for your instances into Excel and generate a chart for trending of this important piece of performance data.
Data Validation Sample
This video sample shows how the clustering algorithm can be used to automatically validate data.
Using Excel 2007 with Analysis Services
In this presentation, you'll see how you can use Excel 2007 to view data and create quick reports against data in Analysis Services. Then, you'll see how to conditionally format the data and apply rules to the data.
Blogs
Shifting Mindsets: Why FinOps is Essential for Cloud Efficiency
By HeyMo0sh
As a DevOps practitioner, I’ve always focused on performance, scalability, and automation. But as...
March 2026 SQL Server Security Updates
By Brian Kelley
On Patch Tuesday, in addition to OS and Office security patches, Microsoft also released...
How Fabric Mirroring Transformed with SQL Server 2025
When mirroring was first released for Azure SQL Database, it used Change Data Capture...
Forums
Multiple Deployment Processes
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How to Use sqlpackage to Detect Schema Drift Between Azure SQL Databases
Comments posted to this topic are about the item How to Use sqlpackage to...
Upgrading Admin Queries
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Upgrading Admin Queries
Question of the Day
Upgrading Admin Queries
I have a query from a former DBA that we run on SQL Server 2025 to check on database metadata. This query references sys.sysaltfiles. I want to refactor this code to be more modern. Which DMV should I reference instead?
See possible answers