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Documenting the database is always a challenge, and there are many techniques you can use to help all the people on your team understand what all your tables are used for. David Poole brings us an easy way to implement a framework for documentation.  Read more...

Michael Sorens aims to make PowerShell a bit easier to get going with by providing a series of collections of general-purpose one-liners to cover most of what you'll need to get useful scripting done.  Read more...

Have you received an XML file that must be migrated into a production database? Today’s workshop dives into an ad hoc method of processing relational datasets delivered in an XML file format.  Read more...

There is a stored procedure that must be run by only one user at a time. In this tip, learn how to prevent multiple users from running the stored procedure at the same time.  Read more...

The first level of this stairway introduces the basics of source control, some common technologies and technologies, and demonstrates how to start versioning a SQL Server database.  Read more...

Three SQL Server MVPs (Jonathan Kehayias, Ted Krueger and Gail Shaw) provide fascinating insight into the most common SQL Server problems, why they occur, and how they can be diagnosed using tools such as Performance Monitor, Dynamic Management Views and server-side tracing. The focus is on practical solutions for removing root causes of these problems, rather than "papering over the cracks".  Read more...

The task of Database Normalization doesn't have to be painful, especially if you follow Old Mother Celko's Normalization Heuristics.  Read more...

Part two of our series looks at the partitioning strategy to separate customers' data, providing security and performance.  Read more...

Steve Jones is putting out an open call for guest editorial pieces in the spring of 2014. If you're interested, read on.  Read more...

Marcin Policht reviews security related challenges of Microsoft Azure Software as a Service-based SQL Database, focusing in particular on the SQL Server and database-level firewall access control functionality and methods that can be employed to implement it.  Read more...

We can create a database simply by typing in the command createdatabase DB1 We don’t have to provide any other...  Read more...

A few months ago I was paged by a client because their SQL Server Failover Cluster Instance (FCI) was experiencing...  Read more...