I'm with Stephen Wynkoop on this one - I'm not sure I'm too hip on Microsoft's emerging direction to divide SQL Server Tools into Developer and Admin Roles. Stephen just posted an editorial based on an interview that he had with Matt Nunn, and points out that Matt confirmed that Microsoft is trying to divide tools along discipline lines - ...

If you do a lot of scripting, SP2 for SS 2005 is going to be a must-have. Luckily it was just released. Here are some of the BIG improvements for people who like to script a lot: Generate Script Wizard. You can now specify that the scripted objects include a DROP statement before the CREATE statement.  Scripting of objects into separate ...

Just an FYI that my latest product review for SQL Server Magazine is in the February Edition. (My February edition only just BARELY showed up in the mail...). In this review I take a look at Quest Software's Spotlight on SQL Server 5.7. It's a decent solution that can be really beneficial for production DBAs tasked with monitoring lots of ...

Quick heads-up on a recently published article I did for SQLTeam.com. The article examines SQL Server Integration Services' Fuzzy-Lookup transformation for use in data-cleansing routines. If you're interested, head over to the article - there's even a sample app you can use to take a quick look at how easy SSIS makes it to add robust ...

If you're in to SQL Server Reporting Services, but want better/richer functionality in Word and Excel - then zip out and skim my article at the ASPAlliance: Using SoftArtisans' OfficeWriter with SQL Server Reporting Services 2005. The article provides an overview of what OfficeWriter brings to the table, and includes a number of ...

ORDER BY has never been technically 'allowed' in a view definition. For example, the following code:CREATE VIEW dbo.[UsersByFirstName] AS SELECT * FROM dbo.[users] ORDER BY [FirstName] GO will throw an error if you attempt to run it. Books Online for SQL Server 2000 says: The ORDER BY clause is invalid in views, inline ...

I love PostXING - now I've just configured it to work with the CS 2.0 upgrade that just happened on SqlAdvice. (I'm actually using the latest version of PostXING - right out of SVN - but it's working great, and setup was a breeze.) Setup was simple. I just put in my username and password, pointed the host at sqladvice.com, and ...

I recently did some book reviews for the ASP Alliance (which will be throwing up a SQL Server Reporting Services portal in the near future).The reviews are for (links are to the reviews):Hitchhiker's Guide to SQL Server 2000 Reporting ServicesandThe Rational Guide to SQL Server Reporting ServicesThe reviews were easy to do as both books are ...

Paolo has started up his own blog on SqlAdvice. Make sure to check it out and subscribe. The focus of his blog will be on Experimental SQL technologies, including AI and self generating SQL entities. Should be a great ride.

In SQL Server 2000, if you use Enterprise Mangler to script your tables, you need to watch out that your constraints don't get turned off. For example, here's a snippet generated from the Northwind.dbo.Employees table (just using the right click > All Tasks > Generate SQL Script wizard). ALTER TABLE [dbo].[Employees] WITH NOCHECK ADD ...