Recently, I've been speaking with customers about upgrading SQL Server.  At times, some customers have a lot of Standard Edition  SQL Server 2005 / 2008 / 2008R2 in their organization and they want to see the features they get when upgrading to SQL Server 2012.  Last week, I sent out some tweets to the #sqlhelp hashtag to see if ...

In SQL Server 2008, you can have what is called a ''Filtered Index''.  What does this mean?  An index may be created for a subset of rows in your table.  For instance you could create a filtered index for a ''state'' column if the value is ''CA'' for California; the rest of the states would not have a value.  When you create ...

The old Hardware Compatibility List which was renamed the ''Windows Catalog'' is no more.  When creating a Clustered Solution, you need to have a system that is Certified for clustering or there will be no official support.  This has been a point of pain in the past as organizations purchased a clustered solution and then one of the ...

When you start to look at SQL Server 2008, there is a sub-theme of using compression to help drive performance and usefulness.  When I hear the word compression, my first thought is ''No - I remember Stacker''.  How many years ago was that obscure reference?  Too many...  Stacker was a third party product for MS-DOS which ...