If you're evaluating StreamInsight you should know that it's more than just an API for writing streaming queries. Included with the StreamInsight installation are powerful tools that allow you to manage, monitor, tune, and troubleshoot your streaming data applications. These tools range from diagnostic methods and properties built into the API to ...

There’s a very nifty feature of T-SQL that, in my experience, not everyone knows about but is handy for generating surrogate key values as part of an ETL routine. I myself had to ask on Twitter what the syntax was because I couldn’t remember it (thanks to Matija Lah for reminding me) so I think its worth blogging in case I forget it again. To ...

In March 2013 I launched an initiative called AdventureWorks on Azure in which I hosted the AdventureWorks2012 sample database on Azure so that the SQL Server community at large could use it to get familiar with what SQL Azure Windows Azure SQL Database had to offer. I asked the SQL community to support the initiative by donating money to keep it ...

Red Gate rocks. If you didn’t know that already, you know it now. The latest evidence to support this claim is the publication of the schedule for US SQL in the City events. They are: 9 Oct – Pasadena 11 Oct – Atlanta 14 Oct – Charlotte Registration for these events opens 24 May. :{>

It’s been just over a week since Windows Azure announced the GA of Infrastructure Services, marking the beginning of a fully supported Infrastructure as a Service in Windows Azure, with SQL Server as a major component. Pre-installed SQL Server VMs are available for pay-per-hour usage in the Windows Azure gallery. Currently Enterprise, ...

Just over 12 months ago I published a blog post entitled AdventureWorks2012 now available for all on SQL Azure. In it I explained that I had set up a Windows Azure SQL Database (then known as SQL Azure database) for the SQL Server community to use and hence familiarise themselves with the SQL Azure offering – I called this initiative ...

This is something that is totally overlooked, in my experience, with SQL Server 2008 R2 and SQL Server 2012. On the contrary to what happens with SQL Server 2008, the Standard version of SQL Server 2008R2 & SQL Server 2012 supports backup compression: SQL Server 2008 R2 BOL ...

I 've been a writer of trade level technical materials for over 13 years now, writing books, articles, blogs, and even tweets for a variety of outlets, almost exclusively about Microsoft SQL Server. While I won't claim to be the best writer in the world, I feel like I have the process of writing down fairly well, yet, for the life of me, there is ...

When you install the database projects template of SSDT you get SQL Server Object Explorer (SSOX) installed as well. SSOX is a pane within Visual Studio and is the main enabler of the Connected Development experience that the SSDT team have attempted to provide. SSOX provides some really cool capabilities that are not in SQL Server Management ...

One very useful usage of Extended Events is the ability to trap SQL Server error without the need to have a server trace running (which, btw, is deprecated), with the additional feature of being able to query the data as soon as it comes in. This means that we a solution to monitor and trap errors as soon as they happen can be easily created, in ...