SQL Server

Project Barcelona: A Revolution in Enterprise Metadata Management – Part 2

by Chris Tao

In my last article, we discussed the nature of metadata, the need for metadata management in the modern enterprise, and some fundamental information about Project Barcelona. In this article, we will go through the Project Barcelona product UI  to see how it can help Enterprise IT administrators on metadata management work. The Project Barcelona product [...]

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A Microsoft SQL Server DMV/DMF Cheat-Sheet

by Mohit Gupta

I am asked this question by Microsoft SQL Server customers again and again: “What dynamic management views (DMV) or dynamic management functions (DMF) should I use?” The short answer is, as many as you need. The detailed answer is, well, it depends. There are well over 150 DMV/DMFs spread across 20 some categories in 2012 [...]

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Project Barcelona: A Revolution in Enterprise Metadata Management

by Chris Tao

Have you ever been asked the following questions when passing through the immigration counter to enter a foreign country? Who are you? Where are you from? Where are you going to? What are you doing here? Most people can usually answer these questions without thinking about it too much. However, if one were to ask [...]

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Adventures in Installing the SQL Server AdventureWorks Sample Database

by Mohit Gupta

I was thinking of writing an article about Microsoft SQL Server T-SQL Basics; however, in order to do the examples and demos I wanted to use a database that’s readily available on the Internet, so I decided to use the common AdventureWorks sample database available on Codeplex,  After downloading the database, it should have been [...]

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SQL Server Compression Estimator Now Available

by boB Taylor

Now Available! A smaller, leaner database.  I have released my SQL Server Compression Estimator tool to CodePlex One of the most exciting additions to SQL Server 2008 was the capability to apply data compression. The benefits are many including reduced disk I/O and memory utilization, with a small cost of CPU overhead. In a database [...]

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How To Convert SQL Server datetime Data To UTC Time

by boB Taylor

As the world moves to a global economy, it becomes more and more important to capture time information with respect to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). This format captures the date and time along with a time zone offset (offset values range from -14:00 to +14:00). Many implementations prior to SQLServer 2008 do not have that [...]

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New for SQL Server: the SQLDiag Configuration Tool is Released

by boB Taylor

The wait is finally over!  The SQLDiag Configuration Tool has been released. One of the most heavily used tools in the SQL Server Premier Field Engineer’s tool belt is PSSDiag. It is maintained by Microsoft’s Customer Service and Support organization (CSS) and has a very nice configuration tool which allows a PFE to configure the [...]

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SQL Iterators: Making the Life of a SQL Server DBA That Much Easier

by boB Taylor

Many Microsoft SQL Server DBAs automate as many of their day to day processes as possible, freeing them to attend to higher impact activities. To do so, many DBAs leveraged two undocumented system stored procedures, namely sp_MSForEachDatabase and sp_MSForEachTable. The upside of using these stored procedures are tremendous. For example, in a database with 1,500 [...]

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How to keep your end users happy during migration to SQL Server 2008

by Sadeesh Poovalur

To achieve a smooth and seamless transition when upgrading versions of your SQL Server database(s), appropriate planning is required or you risk having unhappy users and/or malfunctioning database applications. There are two fundamental upgrade methods: an in-place upgrade and a side-by-side upgrade.  The main distinction between these two methods is that in-place upgrade replaces the [...]

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