February, 2012

This week I was in a customer measuring the effects it would have, in one particular environment where they were using SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise, if they would compress their backups. To start with, we ran a few tests using BACKUP DATABASE & BACKUP...

If you require one or more read-only, static views of a database, which is transactionally consistent with the source database at the moment the static view was created, beginning with SQL Server 2005 you can take advantage of Database Snapshots , which...

Starting with version 2008, SQL Server supports both row and page compression for both tables and indexes . Also SQL Server 2008 R2 continues to support, although it has been deprecated, the vardecimal storage format that was introduced with SQL Server...

A recurring question I receive from colleagues at work, or from friends I know from elsewhere is, where to go in Madrid to enjoy a vegan/vegetarian meal either for themselves or to take someone who is paying them a visit. Following is a compiled list...

Each edition of SQL Server supports a specified number of processor sockets multiplied by the number of logical CPUs in each socket. The Enterprise Edition of SQL Server supports up to 8 CPU sockets, while the Standard only supports up to 4. All this...

Notice that when I wrote this repro and captured the screenshots available below, I didn’t think they will be rendered in this blog. Unfortunately, you will have to click on each image to be able to read the descriptions of every relevant chunk of data...

A colleague who is a consultant in Chile, reported a weird scenario he was observing in one customer and for which he couldn’t articulate an explanation. I saw his question posted in one of our internal distribution lists but couldn’t put...

Fuzzy Lookup is a component which, when used as part of a data flow in an SSIS (SQL Server Integration Services) package, enables you to locate matching records in a reference table just like the standard Lookup transformation does, with the added value...