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Collecting Performance Data into a SQL Server Table
February 14th, 2011 
wiseinn
Occasionally, when tracking down a performance problem, you have to have information over time on the values of particular sets of performance counters. To track down the more insidious or sporadic problem, it is best to have the data in a SQL Server table, so you can query it. Feodor Georgiev explains the command-line way [...]
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Get Started with Chart Development in Reporting Services 2008
February 14th, 2011 wiseinn
With Reporting Services 2008, it is now much easier to produce charts from data in SQL Server, and the variety of charts seems almost limitless. All you need to get started is a quick step-by-step guide that tells you the basics and gets you past the stage of creating the first chart. Well, here it [...]
RegEx-Based Finding and Replacing of Text in SSMS
February 14th, 2011 wiseinn
So often, one sees developers doing repetitive coding in SQL Server Management Studio or Visual Studio that could be made much quicker and easier by using the Regular-Expression-based Find/Replace functionality. It is understandable, since the syntax is odd and some features are missing, but it is still worth knowing about. The Find/Replace feature of SQL [...]
Showplan Operator of the Week – Merge Interval
February 14th, 2011 wiseinn
When Fabiano agreed to undertake the epic task of describing each showplan operator, none of us quite predicted the interesting ways that the series helps to understand how the query optimizer works. With the Merge Interval, Fabiano comes up with some insights about the way that the Query optimizer handles overlapping ranges efficiently. Merge Interval [...]
Which of Your Stored Procedures are Using the Most Resources?
February 14th, 2011 wiseinn
When you start to look at tuning up your stored procedures where do you start? If your database has only a few stored procedures, it might be fairly simple to figure this out by doing a quick test to determine which stored procedure is using the most resources. But what if you have hundreds of [...]
Data Conversion in SQL Server
February 14th, 2011 wiseinn
When working with data in a SQL Server database, you might find that some of that data needs to be converted from one data type to another. For example, suppose you need to compare two numbers, one configured with a numeric data type and one configured with a string data type. To perform the comparison, [...]
SQL Server Unit Testing with tSQLt
February 14th, 2011 wiseinn
onsider the last few database bugs you had to fix: Were they easy to find? When you fixed them, how sure were you that something else didn’t break? Did it result in an incorrect value being recorded? Was the user presented with erroneous data? If so, were they aware of it at the time, or [...]
Effective Clustered Indexes
February 14th, 2011 wiseinn
Clustered indexes are the cornerstone of good database design. A poorly-chosen clustered index doesn’t just lead to high execution times; it has a ‘waterfall effect’ on the entire system, causing wasted disk space, poor IO, heavy fragmentation, and more. This article will present all the attributes that I believe make up an efficient clustered index [...]
Rebuild SQL Server Master Databases in Less than 5 Minutes
February 13th, 2011 wiseinn
Rebuild SQL Server Master Databases in Less than 5 Minutes Have you ever has an issues with a SQL server (2000, 2005, 2008 and so on) that you needed to rebuilt the master database? I’ve had that problem not too long ago and had to spend some time researching how this can be done. Here [...]
SQL Server Data Mining with Microsoft Office Excel
February 12th, 2011 wiseinn
Data Mining with Microsoft Office Excel Introduction A key issue in data mining is not only generating the results but also interpreting them. Unfortunately it is often difficult to interpret the results of data mining and many users are turning to Excel and its data mining add-in tool. Requirements You will need to have permission [...]
