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Two Free MSDN Team Suite Subscriptions

If you want to win one of two MSDN Team Suite Subscriptions worth in excess of £5,000 then its simple. Start contributing the SQL Blog sitte sqlblogcasts.com and you'll be in with a chance. Its free to join up and start blogging so whats stopping you. To learn more read Tony's blog. Free MSDN Subscriptions...

Posted to SimonS Blog on SQL Server Stuff (Weblog) by simonsabin on 11-12-2006
Native Command Substitution is not supported

In response to a recent support incident we raised we got a response about use of detours in SQL Server. A detour is a means by which you can change what SQL Server does. This is used by Litespeed to change native backup commands into Litespeed backup commands. Whilst I always thought this a neat idea...

Posted to SimonS Blog on SQL Server Stuff (Weblog) by simonsabin on 10-05-2006
Is IDENT_CURRENT the next @@identity

I've just finished watching the webcast on building a wareshouse according to Kimball principles. In it they generate an audit record by inserting a record and then using IDENT_CURRENT to get the identity value. A few months ago some one on the forums was screaming because the IDENT_CURRENT was not working...

Posted to SimonS Blog on SQL Server Stuff (Weblog) by simonsabin on 07-11-2006
A large slice of humble pie please Mr Thomson

In my presentation last night I went through a process by which you can create Raw files so that you can append to them in a for each loop as there is no "Create once for the package" setting for a Raw file. I knew Jamie had covered this in his blog but I was doing a slightly different approach and Jamie...

Posted to SimonS Blog on SQL Server Stuff (Weblog) by simonsabin on 06-23-2006
Are you allowed to be sizeist in the database world

Well even if your not, one of my real bug bears is fat tables. These aren't large tables they are fat tables, wide ones with lots of columns or large data types. The reason this gets is is people develop databases with 10s of rows in them. Then end up with millions of rows in them in a live environment...

Posted to SimonS Blog on SQL Server Stuff (Weblog) by simonsabin on 05-25-2006
Running Sums the sequel part x

If you've been following the trillogy (Adams posts 1 , 2 Jamies post ) of attempts at getting a running sum out of TSQL you will appreciate that there are many ways to solve a problem. Following my previous post on partitions and aggregates I thought that might be an avenue. Well it is, and i've thrown...

Posted to SimonS Blog on SQL Server Stuff (Weblog) by simonsabin on 03-12-2006
Increase the performance of updates by 1000

Following on from my previous post on varchar(max) for which the consensus was that one shouldn't use varchar(max) everywhere, I have found this great function that allows you to update a varchar(max) column with great performance gain. The function is called Write and is used in an update statement...

Posted to SimonS Blog on SQL Server Stuff (Weblog) by simonsabin on 03-02-2006
Indirect configuration files in SSIS

Configuring packages based on configuration files is great, whats more you can have the location of configuration file obtain from an environment variable. One word of warning is that, if you change your configuration between indirect and direct the configuration file will be overwritten and your conifguration...

Posted to SimonS Blog on SQL Server Stuff (Weblog) by simonsabin on 02-13-2006
Free training in advanced query performance (almost)

There are a number of sites that offer free training or dedicated training however few offer the level of interaction you get at the UK Usergroup. Itzik Ben-Gan is holding an advanced query performance http://www.sqlserverfaq.com/?eid=62 . These events are very interactive sessions and speaking from...

Posted to SimonS Blog on SQL Server Stuff (Weblog) by simonsabin on 11-21-2005
when is varchar(max) not a varchar(max)

I was looking into a question raised at the lauanch about the best way to pass large sets of values to sql. Currently the person is restricted by the 8000 character limit for a varchar in SQL 2000. A number of options where mentioned including bulk inserting, xml, a user defined type and a varchar(max...

Posted to SimonS Blog on SQL Server Stuff (Weblog) by simonsabin on 11-18-2005

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