One complaint about SEQUENCE is that there is no simple construct such as NEXT (@n) VALUES FOR so that you could get a range of SEQUENCE values as a set.  In a previous post about SEQUENCE, I mentioned that to get a range of rows, you should use the system stored procedure sys.sp_sequence_get_range.  If you've tried this stored ...

One of the reasons for contained databases (see my previous post) is to allow for a more seamless transition when moving a database from one server to another.  One of the biggest complications in doing so is making sure that all of the logins are in place on the new server.  Contained databases help solve this issue by creating a new ...

Attached are the slides and samples from my presentation to the Philadelphia SQL Server User Group on December 8 (Denali_PSSUG_20101208.zip).  Please let me know if you have any problems.  

Sorry to call this out in a separate post (I talked about a bunch of SSMS Connect items the other day), but Aaron Nelson (blog | twitter) jogged my memory today about an issue that has gone unfixed for years: the custom coloring for Registered Servers is neither consistent nor global. For one of my servers, I've chosen a red color to show in the ...

Microsoft's new data platform vision for BI is called BISM - Business Intelligence Semantic Model.  While I focus primarily on manageability, availability and database engine features, I'd like to keep tabs on who can help you out with their input on the other aspects I rarely touch - Analysis Services (SSAS), Integration Services (SSIS), and ...

While it's still only the CTP1 timeframe, getting a glimpse of the changes in system objects can start preparing you for what's coming - especially when there are potential breaking changes, as you'll see below.  Sure, a few of these things can change (and hopefully be fixed!) as the product gets closer to release, but once you have the ...

I guess the title should be, ''You can't restore a SQL Server 2000 database on Denali.''  I had the occasion just today to recover some data from a backup I took way back in 2008 (!) for a colleague who was still on 2000 at that time (again, !).  When I tried to restore the backup on my local Denali instance, I received this error ...

A problem that has plagued SQL Server for a long time is that a database is not very portable.  Sure, you can backup or detach a database and restore or attach it elsewhere, but when you do that, you are missing a lot of the pieces that make that database a part of an application, and a lot of those pieces are really considered administration ...

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 ...