An Interesting Article on Unicode and Character Sets
This may well be more than you want to know about Unicode (and no, it's not a SQL article), but it's a pretty useful discussion to have.
Documenting Stored Procedures
Regular columnist Robert Marda discusses a few ideas on stored procedure documentation. How much documentation do you need and is "documentation" different than code comments?
Mapping Database File Objects and Fragmentation
Chris proposes a tool that would allow you to graphically see the space utilized by objects in a SQL database. Good idea?
When Do You Pull Your Hair Out?
Another adventure in the real world. Steve Jones tracks down a problem with locks on a live system. Read along and see how he works through the issues.
Terminal Services - A Couple Tips
We agree with Andy that Terminal Services is definitely a tool to have in the DBA toolbox. Like most tools, everyone uses them differently. Andy starts the discussion with some comments on how he uses TS - what about you? Do you use TS at all? Use it differently than Andy does? Prefer a different solution? Read the article and post a comment.
Review of SQLDiff by Lockwood
Chris was kind enough to take some time to put this product through it's paces and ends up giving it a very good rating. Read the article to see a nice graphical walkthrough of how to use the product.
Fixed Database Roles
This article covers four of the fixed database roles (db_datareader, db_datawriter, db_denydatareader, and db_denydatawriter). If you're new to SQL security (and maybe even if you're not) this article is worth reading.
Cluster That Index - Part 2
Chris does a follow up to his very popular article on clustered indexes. They seem simple, but in practice they are fairly complicated. Having a solid understanding of clustered indexes will definitely help you get the results you need.
xSQL Object Public Beta
xSQL Object for Microsoft SQL Server has been designed with the DataBase Administrator in mind. Scripting, Comparing and even Synchronizing different objects like tables, views, stored procedures etc. is fast and easy.
Auditing DTS Packages
In this follow up article, Haidong explains how to audit DTS packages. While parts of it are specific to DTS, the general technique has many useful applications.
Blogs
Implement a RAG Solution Using Azure SQL Database
By John
AI and ChatGPT are all the rage these days. Seems like around every corner...
2024 PASS Data Community Summit Prep
By Steve Jones
Next week is the 2024 PASS Data Community Summit in Seattle. I’ll be traveling...
A New Word: Bye-over
By Steve Jones
bye-over – n. the sheepish casual vibe between two people who’ve shred an emotional...
Forums
PASS Summit Time
Comments posted to this topic are about the item PASS Summit Time
database restore chain
I have a backup of full, differential and transaction log setup for our database....
Temporary Table Problem
Hello everyone, I hope you can help me. I have a table with measurement...
Question of the Day
Incremental Statistics
I have run this on SQL Server 2022 for the Sales database:
ALTER DATABASE Sales SET AUTO_CREATE_STATISTICS ON (INCREMENTAL = ON)I then run this in the Sales database:
USE Sales GO CREATE STATISTICS CustomerStats1 ON dbo.Customer (CustomerKey, EmailAddress) WITH INCREMENTAL = OFFThe dbo.Customer table is partitioned. How are statistics created? See possible answers