Driving The Database Engine
A blog about Microsoft SQL Server.
SQL Iterators - Making the life of the DBA that much easier
There are several undocumented stored procedures that many DBAs rely on to do their day to day work...
Author: Tom Mills Microsoft Date: 05/01/2011
SQL Diag Configuration Tool released on Codeplex
SQL Diag is a very useful diagnostic tool that will help capture performance information from SQL...
Author: Tom Mills Microsoft Date: 04/30/2011
The Microsoft Data Warehouse Toolkit, 2nd Edition: With SQL Server 2008 R2 and the Microsoft Business Intelligence Toolset published
The updated version of this essential Business Intelligence book has been published. If you don't...
Author: Tom Mills Microsoft Date: 03/01/2011
New book on PowerPivot for Excel 2010 published
There's a new book out on PowerPivot for Excel 2010 by Sivakumar Harinath, Ron Pihlgren and Denny...
Author: Tom Mills Microsoft Date: 06/22/2010
New SQL Server 2008 R2 High Availability Whitepaper Published
This whitepaper describes five commonly-deployed architectures using SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server...
Author: Tom Mills Microsoft Date: 06/02/2010
The upgrade is done...
After a big effort, the MSDN and Technet blog platform has been upgraded. This new platform should...
Author: Tom Mills Microsoft Date: 05/24/2010
Test page
this is a test, please ignore.
Author: Tom Mills Microsoft Date: 10/13/2009
Troubleshooting Reporting Services at the Client Tier with Fiddler
SQL Server Reporting Services enables report developers to build and deploy reports quickly and...
Author: Tom Mills Microsoft Date: 10/13/2009
Windows 7 RTM is available, time to upgrade!
As many of you know, Windows 7 RTM is now available to MSDN and Technet subscribers. I've had the...
Author: Tom Mills Microsoft Date: 08/11/2009
References for SQL Server Consolidation
These are links to material relevant to consolidating and upgrading SQL Server. SQL Server...
Author: Tom Mills Microsoft Date: 07/31/2009
Disk Partition Alignment Best Practices for SQL Server Whitepaper
Jimmy May and Denny Lee (along with a huge supporting cast) have published an excellent white paper...
Author: Tom Mills Microsoft Date: 06/04/2009
BlogMS - Official Microsoft Team Blogs
All the official Microsoft Team Blogs are now listed on BlogMS. These are blogs maintained by the...
Author: Tom Mills Microsoft Date: 05/14/2009
The Existence of Anti-SPIDs?
An astute member of the SQL Server community has observed the presence of SPIDs with a negative...
Author: Tom Mills Microsoft Date: 04/29/2009
Consolidating Your Database Infrastructure Presentation from SQLSaturday Atlanta
Thanks to those of you who attended SQLSaturday and a special thanks to all the volunteers from the...
Author: Tom Mills Microsoft Date: 04/28/2009
Using the SQL Server Performance Dashboard Reports on 2008
One of my colleagues, Rob Carrol, has uncovered a way to use the Performance Dashboard Reports on...
Author: Tom Mills Microsoft Date: 04/02/2009
I've never met a Microsoft employee who...
As a consultant working in the field, I am part of a relatively small group of people who are...
Author: Tom Mills Microsoft Date: 03/18/2009
This is how we roll with SQL consolidation...
Mark Pohto, one of our Microsoft IT senior system engineer's, just published an excellent technical...
Author: Tom Mills Microsoft Date: 03/11/2009
SQL Saturdays
SQL Saturdays are events organized by local SQL user groups (mostly) that consist of a one day...
Author: Tom Mills Microsoft Date: 02/19/2009
New security patch MS09-004 for SQL Server is out...
A new security patch for SQL Server has been announced. You should pay close attention to this one...
Author: Tom Mills Microsoft Date: 02/10/2009
Creating a job to re-index all user databases in a Standard Edition instance of SQL Server 2005/2008
Here's another version of the reindex script that supports SQL Server 2005/2008 Standard and...
Author: Tom Mills Microsoft Date: 02/10/2009
Winter weather???
I'm in Miami for the next couple of weeks. They issued a "sweater alert" last night because the...
Author: Tom Mills Microsoft Date: 01/14/2009
Creating a job to re-index all user databases in an instance of SQL Server 2005/2008 Enterprise Edition
Here is a script that will create a job to re-index each user database in an instance that is not in...
Author: Tom Mills Microsoft Date: 12/31/2008
Obfuscating credit card or Social Security numbers
Here's a function that will obfuscate a string of credit card or social security numbers. It can be...
Author: Tom Mills Microsoft Date: 12/26/2008
Below Periscope Depth...
I wanted to apologize to anyone who has wondered why my blog has gone cold in the last few months....
Author: Tom Mills Microsoft Date: 11/26/2008
A handy WMI script to check for pending file rename operations
Here's a script that will check for and display any pending file rename operations. Windows stores...
Author: Tom Mills Microsoft Date: 08/15/2008
SQL Server Load Test Utility Released
A utility to generate unit tests for Visual Studio Team Suite has been posted to Codeplex. This tool...
Author: Tom Mills Microsoft Date: 07/22/2008
Finding Fragmented Indexes in a Database Running in SQL Server 2000 Compatibility Mode on 2005
The Index Physical Statistics report in SQL Management Studio is an easy way to identify fragmented...
Author: Tom Mills Microsoft Date: 07/02/2008
Finding dynamic SQL code that's not compatible with SQL 2005
Upgrading a database from SQL Server 2000 to 2005 is not a difficult task. Microsoft provides the...
Author: Tom Mills Microsoft Date: 06/27/2008
Using the SQL Server Performance Dashboard Missing Indexes Report
The Microsoft SQL Server Performance Dashboard contains a drill-down report detailing information...
Author: Tom Mills Microsoft Date: 05/30/2008
Flushing them out of the walls...it's finally time to upgrade to 2005!
It's interesting how many companies are suddenly interested in upgrading from SQL Server 2000 to...
Author: Tom Mills Microsoft Date: 05/05/2008
Cloud computing...will the DBA become an endangered species?
Here is an un-official but interesting article about the future of hosted database services:...
Author: Tom Mills Microsoft Date: 05/03/2008
Obligatory Welcome Message and Posting Placeholder
Welcome to my MSDN blog. I'm privileged to be able to contribute to the MSDN community. Over time,...
Author: Tom Mills Microsoft Date: 05/03/2008