Introduction Ever find yourself needing to test connectivity, but you’re on a machine with no client tools? It happens to me occasionally. Here’s one trick to help: UDL files Right-click on the Windows Desktop, hover over New, and click Text Document: Rename the file to test.udl: Because you are changing the extension, you will be ...

Suppose that you need to implement the following logic: IF(row exists)   Update the row ELSE  Insert a new row. If you already are on 2008, you should use MERGE command, and you don’t need to read this post. Prior to 2008 this logic has to be implemented using UPDATE and INSERT commands. I will stress test several ...

<Denis Gobo’s mode on> Suppose you have an empty table:   SELECT COUNT(*) FROM SampleTable --- 0   What would be the result of the following query:   DBCC CHECKIDENT('SampleTable', RESEED, 1) INSERT SampleTable(j) SELECT 1 SELECT SCOPE_IDENTITY()   <Denis Gobo’s mode ...

 When you run NUnit/C# unit tests against your local instance, you are a dbo. As such, you are not getting any errors caused by missing permissions. However, you can impersonate another user, and run your unit tests in the context of that other user. The following test harness demonstrates the ...

Tech Ed 2008 included some major announcements for database development folks. One of the biggees was this - and announcement that Database Edition is going to support DB2 development! Gert and the team have been working hard to expand the underlying architecture and functionality of Database Edition (making it extrememly difficult for ...

Well, I have just finished a series of articles about unit testing on simple-talk.com, and some techniques were not included, just to keep the articles short. Still problems such as reproducing a lock timeout and unit testing the retry after it (lock timeout) are interesting, at least to me, so I am continuing. You will need the ...

Mea... This may be a little off-topic. I use Virtual Server and Virtual PC a lot for things like testing beta and CTP releases of SQL Server. I don't have time or the inclination to reformat physical hard drives, load an OS, or even fiddle with restoring from an enterprise backup solution like Ghost. I blogged about configuring IIS7 for ...

According to numerous sources - most recently a SQL Server Magazine article entitled Too Soon for SQL Server 2008? Readers Say ''Yes!'' - a lot of SQL Server customers are holding off upgrading to SQL Server 2005, preferring to wait for the upcoming release of SQL Server 2008. While I understand the economics, I worry about the ...