At the end of my Denali presentation at SQL Saturday #65 in Vancouver, a member of the audience asked, ''What makes a columnstore index different from a regular nonclustered index?'' At the end of a busy day, I was at a loss for an answer, and I'll explain why. First, I'll briefly explain the basic, core, high-level functionality of a columnstore ...

Sadly, THROW is not mentioned on the Programmability Enhancements (Database Engine) topic of Denali's ''What's New'' section.  So, unless you were at PASS or have been reading the various blogs from the keynotes and other Denali sessions, the presence of this keyword may be news to you.  I wanted to touch briefly on what THROW can do ...

There are posts elsewhere that go through the whole rigamarole (for example, this post from Don Gill, SQL Server's Group Content Publishing Manager).  I just wanted to highlight the key bullet points: if you want to use Books Online locally, you will need to: install Books Online from Denali setup. Note that Management Studio is now ...

If you come across a SQL Server that is not running, it can be troublesome to determine what happened and when.  You can run through the Windows event viewer, but this can be a real needle in a haystack problem on busy servers, especially if there are a lot of instances.  Wouldn't it be great to be able to easily read the SQL Server ...

It is the second day of keynotes at PASS, and we're gearing up for Quentin Clark's presentation.  There are not as many kilts around as I would have expected, and I'm only noticing because this year I'm wearing one too.  Actually, at the bloggers' table, there is a pretty good kilt contingent, and I think we've all been a little ...