The following pattern typically stems from an old practice used in SQL 4.x and 6.x days, before IDENTITY was introduced. begin tran declare @iVal int select @iVal = iVal from CounterTable (HOLDLOCK) where CounterName = 'CaseNumber' update CounterTable...

Here is a question we have received from several customers and internally at Microsoft: Do I need to apply the “SNAC” package that comes with some of the cumulative updates? Just so we are all on the same terms, SNAC refers to SQL Native Client . and...

Updated 10/29/09:  Added section describing SQL Engine only servers at the bottom.   Brian Hartman did a great job outlining what the GDR is and why we had it.  You can read it here .  I’m not going to rehash that here.  What...

In little under a month (November 3-6), the US PASS 2009 Summit is being held in Seattle, Washington at the downtown Seattle Convention Center. The Microsoft CSS team has been speaking and working at PASS since 2003 and this year we are back again. i...