SQL Server 2005 Adoption Rates
How many people are getting ready to upgrade to SQL Server 2005? Why are they upgrading? Why not? Edgewood Solutions conducted a survey and the results are in. Read on for the executive overview and learn how to get a complete copy of the results.
SSIS - Reusable Benchmark Harness
We all know testing is important, but face it, testing is not the highlight of anyone's daily work. And more important than testing your code the first time is regression testing after you have fixed a few bugs. Kristian Wedberg brings us a new article that uses SSIS to build a harness that allows repeatable testing of code and applying benchmarks to be sure that things are working as expected.
SQL Server 2000 SP3 and xp_cmdshell Woes
The problems caused by the SQL Sapphire Worm, also know as the SQL Slammer, have caused many sites to do a quick upgrade to SQL Server 2000 Service Pack 3 (SP3). It includes the fix that prevents infection by the worm. While moving to the latest service pack is usually a good thing, to do so without thorough testing risks breaking a working application. That is exactly what happened to one of my clients over the weekend.
New Survey: Why Upgrade MS SQL Server?
Take this survey for a chance at a $20 gift certificate from Amazon. Give your reasons to upgrade and your insight on performance issues.
SQL Rescue Review
Having a good tool to read your SQL Server transaction log can be a lifesaver, or a job saver. RegGate Software, maker of a number of useful SQL Server utilities has a log reader and Grany Fritchey takes a look at this product and how it might work in your environment.
Visual Defrag for SQL Server Discount
How often do you check your SQL Server tables for fragmentation? How often do you defragment them? This is one of those technologies that has been available for disks for a long time, but now is here for SQL Server. Norb Technologies is offering a discount to the SQLServerCentral.com community on this product.
Calling COM From T-SQL
One of the lesser used features of SQL Server is the ability to access the functionality in various DLLs using a COM interface. Dinesh Asanka brings us a basic article with a few examples in how you can work with COM components from inside SQL Server 2000.
Loving to Hate the Data Administrator
You can just hear it now: At the table down the hall, there’s a group of people having, (as it seems to you) yet another academic discussion on the merits of third-normal form and the structure of primary keys. You’ve heard many discussions like this before — it all seems so pointless. After all, doesn’t it just boil down to “create table” commands and a bunch of DDL? You mastered all that in your first DBA class. What could be so hard?
Microsoft SQL Server Cluster Vs Standby Server
Building a highly available system is hard. This short white paper from Sonasoft shows some of the differences between a cluster and their standby server product.
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