One of the great features included in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) is the ability to script out a database so that it can be re-created using TSQL commands. This makes the database highly transportable in that the script can be generated and then modified if needed to address implementations for different versions of SQL Server. For example, the Sequence […]

Here’s a very useful tip when working on queries in SSMS. While you are in SSMS you can quickly open the SQL Server Profiler program by selecting SQL Server Profiler from the tools menu. This is probably common knowledge. However, did you know you can open up a profiler session already configured to capture the command related to a specific […]

You can open many different query windows in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). Each query window creates its own connection to the specified database. Even though SQL Server supports executing multiple queries over the same connect, no connections are shared in SSMS. Here’s a cool thing you can do from a query window. Press F4, or select Properies Window from […]

One of the things I really like about SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) is the ability to use templates to help standardize and automate the creation of SQL code. This works by including special text in your template document, much like mail merge in the old days of word processing. Pressing Ctrl-Shift-M opens a dialog allowing you to replace the […]

One thing that sets SQL Server apart from many other data engines are all of the tools and extensions that surround it. SQL Agent, SSIS, SSRS, Analysis Services, Data Broker, etc. are a few of those valuable extensions. The one I have enjoyed the most, maturing from two different products in the early ‘90s, is SQL Server Management Studio, (SSMS). […]

Today I want to talk a little bit about the difference between the Sql Server FileStream introduced in 2008, and the SQL Server FileTable introduced in SQL 2012. Both features share the common capability of integrating file data with a SQL Server database which has been enabled to use FileStreams. A file stream is a pointer to a byte array […]

SQL Server 2012 introduced two functions that have been around for a while in other SQL engines that are really quite powerful. They are the Immediate If (IIF) and Choose functions. Either function can be replaced with the CASE function. However, they are easier to read and understand exactly what is intended in the query. IIF evaluates a Boolean expression. […]

As software professionals, one of our primary strategic goals is to eliminate redundant work. If we manage servers, we want to automate that management as much as possible. If we write software, we want code re-use. If we are writing boiler plate code where we are simply applying the same pattern to a new object, we want to automate that […]

I recently read a really cool blog on how to handle views with multiple layers of dependency. The problem was that the developer needed to drop a number of views for a particular product. The problem they were facing, and solved very nicely, was how do drop the views in the correct order of dependency so that you wouldn’t get […]

SQL Server has really come to Linux in a big way. That is, if you consider SQL Server to be the database engine without the external bells and whistles. In my opinion, this is a remarkable achievement. The SQL Server Engine has a lot of interaction with the operating system. Making something this powerful work well in another environment is […]