As part of Microsoft’s push to improve dba/developer knowledge and uptake of SQL Server 2005, Microsoft have released free training for SQL Server 2005 available online until 1st November 2006. There’s currently seven free courses covering installation, administration, programming and other features of SQL Server 2005. Included in each course are hands-on virtual labs, and […]
Today sees Microsoft release the June Community Technology Preview (CTP) of SQL Server 2005. It’s a public preview and can be downloaded by anyone (you don’t need a MSDN subscription for this one) By the same note, Microsoft also announced at Tech.Ed that they will be shipping SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005 in […]
For those of us useing the SQL Server Health and History Tool (a.k.a. SQLH2) version 2.026 was released on 19 May 2005. A free download from Microsoft, the SQL Server Health and History Tool (SQLH2) collects information about your SQL Server installations. Details about which services/features are installed; configuration of the machine, OS and SQL […]
SQL Server 2005 allows you to create DDL Triggers in a database, that fire whenever someone attempts to change the structure of your database. Ever accidentally created tables / views / sprocs in the master database? Well Greg Low published a trigger you can place in the master database to prevent changes there. Apparently Greg’s […]
Personally I like to set the default database for all logins to tempdb. It helps people remember to select the correct database before they start doing things. If someone forgets to change their database, i’d rather them attempting to do crazy things in tempdb instead of master. There are some programs / install scripts that […]
It’s late at night, you’re still at work, waiting for long running task to complete so you can go home. Well why not make SQL Server 2005 wait for you? Well gather your things and make use of the new WAITFOR statement, thats been introduced as part of Service Broker. You can ask SQL Server […]
While searching through google for performance tips on SSIS / DTS 2005, I came across Ashvini Sharma’s blog. There’s a number of great entries dealing with package execution and ways you can improve your throughput. Checkout the entry on DefaultBufferMaxRows and DefaultBufferSize.
COLLATE Keyword used to define string collation used for a database, column or server. Can also be used to cast the collation of a column or variable when used in a t-sql expression. SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005 allow you to use Windows Collation Names or SQL Collation Names. To see a list […]
If you’ve ever worked with databases from different sources, or with different collation settings, you’ve probably encountered an error like this: Msg 468, Level 16, State 9, Line 1 Cannot resolve collation conflict between ‘Latin1_General_CI_AS’ and ‘SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS’ in equal to operation. The error is cause by having different collation settings for the columns in the […]
One of the tasks regularly performed in ETL processes is using BCP or BULK INSERT to import large amounts of data into a empty database. You might be using these tools to import a single file into a table, or many files into a table. Either way, SQL Server is going to want to update […]
