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Paul Randal, he of SQLskills.com fame, has published a new whitepaper on High Availability with SQL Server. If you follow any SQL Server news or blog sites, you’ve probably already see the announcement for it, but I wanted to mention it here in case you haven’t seen it yet. There are certain references...

As many of you know, I used to work on documentation like whitepapers and Books Online for SQL Server. One of the main problems I've found with our documentation isn't that there is not enough content - we have over 65,000 pages in BOL alone - but that it is hard to find. The search tool inside the "fat"...

Did you know that you can show help in two different ways from SQL Server Management Studio? Most of us like the full client of Books Online, which is actually a program called the “DExplorer”. This tool has multiple windows, a URL bar, a search feature and more. But those of you who are more familiar...

I get asked a lot if it is possible to copy the Favorites from Books Online to another Favorites folder on another computer. The answer is yes! The Help Favorites are stored by default in: C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\Shell\VS Help...

With all of the content in Books Online arranged into a single table-of-contents, it’s sometimes difficult to find information that “spans” topics. For instance, if you want to find out about general security topics, you’ll find they are spread across many sections of Books Online. Although we try to...

It's just documentation - right? Well, there's actually a bit more to it than that. Of course, we update the content of Books Online all the time, as I've mentioned before. But we've also innovated in the way that we present and deliver the content. I asked Bryan, a friend that works here with me, to...

You can get the latest crunchy SQL Server documentation goodness here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlserver/bb428874.aspx

Books Online is available in both a "full" client installation or on the web. In the URL bar of the client you'll see a reference for each topic. If you want to send that topic to a friend who might not have Books Online install, there's a way to translate the URL in Books Online to a Web-based URL for...

I've mentioned before that we update Books Online several times a year, and we're moving to do it even more often. I m very happy to announce that SQL Server 2005 Books Online Doc Refresh 4 is now part of Microsoft Update. This means that customers who have installed a previous version of Books Online...

I've mentioned before that Books Online isn't just a client install, but the same content is also available on the web. In fact, it's available in two places on the web: SQL Server 2005 BOL on TechNet: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms130214.aspx . SQL Server 2005 BOL on MSDN: http://msdn2...

I just found this out today. If you have Books Online installed on your system, did you know you can look at the local content in a regular old web browser? At the top of a Books Online topic, you'll see a URL bar. The URL starts with ms-help:// , which is really just another protocol pointing to the...

Did you know you can quickly locate all kinds of topics that walk you step-by-step through a lot of the common tasks in SQL Server, from backups to creating a report in Reporting Services? In the local client (DExplorer) tool, just look on the top bar for the "How do I" button and click it. From the...

We have a lot of content out there - a LOT. But how do you find it all? We have a great new resource that one of our team members put together. It’s a customized Windows Live search, that limits results to Books Online. Check this out, and make sure you let your contacts know to visit it and provide...

"Books Online" has become an industry standard for documentation, with a really long history. Before it became so large, it used to actually be a set of books, and you could read them electronically, hence the name. But Books Online is no longer published as a book (it's far too large for that), although...

SQL Server Books Online is an absolutely huge resource. With over 58,000 pages that change several times a year, it's like getting all of the books at one time that you are ever going to use from Grade-School through College. Not only that, it is used by beginners, intermediates and experts; by developers...

As I mentioned in my last blog post , SQL Server is updated several times a year - our team calls this a "web refresh". Isn't it great that we come up with new words to describe things? Anyway, SQL Server Service Pack 2 just released , and Books Online must be updated right after you finish the SP2 install...

Most of us have stacks of books on our shelves about SQL Server. But you also have an amazing resource that you get for free with SQL Server, or even on the web: Books Online. Some of you might not know how SQL Server Books Online is put together and what goes into it, so I thought I’d explain what’s...