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22 February 2010 11:47

Don't always believe your system procs - they may lie !

It's sometimes interesting how a simple thing can catch you out! I have a set of routines which handle the process of restoring copies of databases on other servers, it also supports full blown log shipping but has various other functionality. Generally...
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10 February 2010 12:09

Print vs Select - security through obscurity ?

Now here's an interesting snippet which I'm sure will provoke a few " ... and you didn't know that! " comments. I wanted to take the output from a stored procedure into a table using the insert into mytable exec proc; command but...
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01 February 2010 14:44

Detach a database and take out a cluster.

During testing I managed to take my SQL 2008 cluster offline by simply detaching a database. See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms189128.aspx explaining the background. When you detach a database the ntfs file permissions go to the account that...
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25 October 2009 20:48

Greenwash and ROI

First up let's make clear I do support most things green, or greener, however I feel that so much is talked green but misses critical information, e.g. the point of it in the first place. I was reading about the usual sucess story of how virtualisation...
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30 March 2009 21:35

Parallel Worlds or slipped reality?

I’ve been planning a post on the subject of parallelism for some considerable time but the inability to be able to present reproducible tests for illustration had been a major concern. Things change however, I picked up on an interesting post  http...
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11 March 2009 22:14

Does a GUID make a good clustered key?

I've covered the use of unique identifiers ( guids ) in my presentations and in my articles on anlysing indexes; however I probably wasn't quite as succinct as I could have been. So do I like unique identifiers as clustered keys? Absolutely not...
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19 July 2008 12:08

Cannot generate SSPI context

Now here's a slightly interesting point about this error. Although the kb does actually mention this reason for the error it is about the last thing on the article, a footnote, and it doesn't specifically word it to cover this scenario, and we...
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26 May 2008 15:07

Covering Clustered Indexes

I’ve noticed that of late I’ve become a bit more critical of a well known publication that I suspect many DBA’s read. I have subscriptions to a number of publications and for the ones that I pay for I’m generally quite content. I like paper / hard copy...
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17 April 2008 12:26

Disappointing Review.

It's not very often I'm provoked into making a criticism of a respected publication, however there's nothing like being grumpy! I've published a number of posts about baselines, trending and performance analysis and I've been quick...
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29 February 2008 19:57

Only once every four years thank goodness!

I never cease to be amazed by what I discover within IT, mostly these days I'm more disappointed than anything else, I'm not a lover of the let's bash Microsoft about security patches or we should all use Linux / Open source as in the latter I'm sure...
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22 February 2008 20:34

dbcc dropcleanbuffers - or maybe not

As a consequence of another action I was prompted to want to clear the buffer cache – or to be more precise I tried to clear the buffer cache. So stepping back, what happens if you install more memory than the combined size of your databases? Most would...
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19 September 2007 13:56

Would you buy Microsoft Support?

I've reached an interesting situation with microsoft support whereby I can't get past the first line telephone contacts. Under an incident/support I was recommended to use release 3179 for sql 2005 sp2 - this was for a 32 bit environment and I'm just...
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13 September 2007 10:14

Analysing Indexes at SQLBits

Seems I've been selected to present at SQLBits on my work on Index Analysis. So a thankyou for those who voted for my presentation. I just noticed this post http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlcat/archive/2007/09/12/sqlcat-tracks-at-2007-sql-pass.aspx?CommentPosted...
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01 August 2007 16:39

dbmail puzzler

This had me scratching my head for a short while:- The first query sends a mail with a return status of 0 exec @return = msdb . dbo . sp_send_dbmail @profile_name = 'Any profile Will Do' , @subject = @subject , @body = @body , @query = @query , @query_result_separator...
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19 June 2007 14:03

SQL Community is good to be part of.

It’s interesting to sometimes compare the flow of information about SQL Server to that available for other products. I’m currently working on an application which runs on SQL Server but by default / was developed with an ISAM back end. This particular...
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