(Code can be downloaded here ) The Backup part “Can you please give me a recent backup of all user databases on that computer please ?” That is the sentence that will delay your planned work for the afternoon and will keep you busy for numerous hours...

As I was asked about a functionality how to check a string for being of the type GUID and only finding either solution with massive string operations, or using TRY..CATCH trying to CAST a value and then returning the CAST or CONVERT result, I created...

Nothing really fancy, but a small script I was now asked twice for. So I thought I publish it for the public and for the reference for others. It simply calculates the percentage of NULL values for a specific table in all columns. The last request was...

  After many months of hard work, collaboration, short weekends and nights, the new ALM Rangers guidance document is out covering Visual Studio Database Projects. Details about the documents and the documents themselves can be found here: Visual...

Again a common question which I wanted to be able to answer once and for all: How can we expand files from a .sql file referenced with the :r operator ? Ok, lets make a step back in the past and see how we used to reference files in .sql files and calling...

  For those asking a couple of times if the JobScripter for SQL Server Agent jobs is also available in 2008… here it is ! The only difference is that the version v2 is now targeting to SMO Assemblies of SQL Server 2008 which is version 10.0. This...

  In some cases it it interesting to know whether a database was directly created on the current version of the running SQL Server instance or if the database was upgraded during an upgrade of the instance or by attaching a database from an older...

  In some cases you might face the problem that SQL Server Agent Service didn't come up or was stopped for reason. Jobs scheduled in the downtime will not run automatically when the Agent service comes up again, and that is a good thing. I often...

  A common question is how to move back to the older version of the database once upgraded. The answer is, you can´t . By attaching the database to the new SQL Server version an upgrade is done internally which can be seen if you run the attach commands...

Some time ago I did a blog entry for SQL Server Integration Services packages as a data source for SQL Server Reporting Services reports. You can find this article here. This feature relies on a data processing extension that is explained in detail here...

Some time ago I got an interesting questions why the following applies: -- drop table a create table a(m varchar ( max ), i int ) go declare @cnt int --Explicit transaction begin tran set @cnt=@@trancount insert into a select 'inside...

(The project is attached to this blog post, if you have any questions, feel free to send me a mail. You find the bits for download here .) For all of you who haven´t been able to read my blog entry on logging yet, I suggest you to read the first...

Ever wondered what New! means if you see a report in SQL Server Reporting Services Manager ? Obviously it is a report which was created recently. But what does “recently” mean and do I have a way to influence what SQL Server identifies with “New!”. Well...

(Download the dbo.fndblog2 function here ) Update and word of caution: Be aware that   the mentioned function is undocumented and subject to change in any release of SQL Server. You should only use that for investigational purposes and in case you...

  (Sample code included at the end of the post) The initiator for this post was Dan Atkins who wanted to create a feed from relational data to consume it directly from a created gadget. Where can I find that in the toolbox ? First of all, you won...

  Someone pinged me according the article I wrote about SSIS as a data source in Reporting Services. In general this is easy to implement and configure. One problem though occurs if you already had SQL Server 2005 on the machine first and updated...

After skipping some internal version the 0.3.3.0 is available now , these are the new features: Version 0.3.1.0 <Internal Bugfixing> Version 0.3.3.0 -Moved settings to a separate settings page and save them for later use (Suggested by me) -Added...

  These are the new functionalities comparing the 0.2.3.1 version: -Added n-m mapping for different test iterations (Suggestion to Jimmy) -Included output to CSV (Suggestion to Jimmy) -Being able to specify a delimiter for the CSV output (Suggestion...

  The first version (0.3.0.0) of a small project I did was published to Codeplex ( http://rsparamlogcache.codeplex.com/ ). It enables you to log and cache user parameter values for further usage and statistics. Here is short extract from the project...

Running SQL Server Traces on SQL Server Express SQL Server Express does not come with a SQL Server Profiler GUI. (Period) Though can still use SQL Server Profiler tools from other editions to connect to the SQL Server Express edition. (But make sure that...

  Head up, the new CU is ready ! This one is CU (Cumulative Update) 4 for SQL Server 2008 SP1 (means that you will need to have SP1 installed in order to install the update) See the information of the release services team here: http://blogs.msdn...

As it was hard to find the cause of this error and the answer, I wanted to share some searchable information on the internet for that. The following problem occurs while doing an upgrade of “older” VSDB project to the new GDR releases. As you have seen...

Thank for all participants attending my sessions in Mainz. As promised, here are the slide decks and demos I used during my presentations. If you have any question to this are other SQL Server related topics, feel free to ping me. I am looking forward...

  Thank for all participants attending my sessions in Mainz. As promised, here are the slide decks and demos I used during my presentations. If you have any question to this are other SQL Server related topics, feel free to ping me. I am looking...

  My colleague Marvelous Jimmy ( JimmyMay ) and myself did a small project to parse and interpret the results of the testing tool SQLIO. It produces ready-to-interpret reports and reusable results in Excel and will save you (as of Jimmy) much time...