TechNet Magazine: SQL Server 
SQL Server: Top Tips for Effective Database Maintenance
Paul S. Randal - August 2008
Far too often, people who are not trained database administrators somehow end up responsible for a database. They lack the proper training and knowledge to maintain their database, and problems begin to develop. Here’s a primer for all those involuntary DBAs who need a crash course in database maintenance best practices.SQL Q&A: Partitioning, Consistency Checks, and More
Paul S. Randal - August 2008
Paul Randal answers your SQL Server questions, showing you how to perform consistency checks and other maintenance on very large databases, how to handle an accidental upgrade, and more.Sustainable Computing: Learning from the Quincy Datacenter
Dave Ohara - June 2008
The Microsoft datacenter located in Quincy, WA is powered entirely by hydroelectricity. Dave Ohara takes you on a tour of this facility and shares some best practices from the Microsoft datacenter team for building and operating a sustainable datacenter.SQL Q&A: I/O Errors, Database Mirroring, and More
Paul S. Randal - June 2008
Paul Randal answers your SQL Server questions, showing you how to create corruption in a test database, helping you avoid a shrink-grow-shrink-grow cycle, and explaining how you can determine how many databases you can mirror before performance starts to degrade.SQL Server 2008: What's New
Randy Dyess - April 2008
The new version of SQL Server offers a host of new features and enhancements that promise to improve performance, increase security, and make life better for database administrators. Here’s an overview of the key changes and what you can expect from SQL Server 2008.SQL Server 2008: Security
Rick Byham - April 2008
Security continues to be an area of deliberate improvement for SQL Server. Explore some of the most important security-related changes you’ll find in SQL Server 2008, from encryption and authentication enhancements to Policy-Based Management and the new auditing system that will help with regulatory requirements.SQL Server 2008: New Data Types
Kelly Wilson - April 2008
SQL Server 2008 offers seven new built-in data types that let you work with more complex data and simplify the management of structured, semi-structured, and even unstructured data. Get an in-depth look at these new data types and find out how you can use them to improve data management in your infrastructure.SQL Server 2008: Data Warehouse Query Performance
S. Agarwal, T. Grabs, and J. Hammer - April 2008
SQL Server 2008 offers more powerful relational data warehousing capabilities. Take a close look at key performancerelated data warehousing features and find out how you can use all this new technology to optimize query performance.SQL Server: Minimize Blocking in SQL Server
Cherié Warren - April 2008
While locking is essential to support concurrent read and write activities on a database, blocking can adversely affect system performance. Learn how to optimize your SQL Server database to minimize blocking, and see how you can monitor the system to better understand how locking impacts performance.SQL Q&A: Grow Databases, Use IFilters, and Connect Remotely
Edited by Matthew Graven - April 2008
Find out how to grow databases programmatically, learn how to use IFilters, and explore firewall settings that support remote SQL Server connections.SQL Q&A: Non-Clustered Indexes and Retaining Permissions
Saleem Hakani and Dan Carollo - February 2008SQL Q&A: Memory Configuration, Performance Profiling, Setting Your Fill Factor, and More
Edited by Nancy Michell - December 2007SQL Server: Optimizing SQL Server Query Performance
Maciej Pilecki - November 2007
When you optimize database performance, tuning individual queries is as important as tuning server hardware and software configurations. Even one runaway query can bring a database to its knees. Here's a guide to generating, analyzing, and tweaking execution plans to optimize the performance of your SQL Server queries.SQL Server: Optimizing SQL Server CPU Performance
Zach Nichter - October 2007
The key to healthy CPU utilization on your database server is to make sure that the CPU is spending its time processing what you want it to process rather than wasting cycles on poorly optimized code or sluggish hardware. Here are some tips for getting the most out of SQL Server and your hardware.SQL Q&A: Login Triggers, Data File Defrags, and More
Edited by Nancy Michell - October 2007SQL Q&A: CPU Bottlenecks, Restoring and Moving Databases, and More
Edited by Nancy Michell - September 2007SQL Q&A: Finding Locks, Large Queries, I/O Statistics, and More
Edited by Nancy Michell - August 2007SQL Q&A: Inside Clustering, Mysterious Hangs, the SA Account, and More
Edited by Nancy Michell - July 2007SQL Q&A: 64-Bit Installations, Allocating Cluster Memory, and More
Edited by Nancy Michell - June 2007SQL Q&A: Best Practices Analyzer, Multi-Core Processors, and More
Edited by Nancy Michell - May 2007SQL Q&A: Rebuilding Indexes, Disk Queue Length, and More
Edited by Nancy Michell - April 2007SQL Server: New Tools to Diagnose Index Health
Randy Dyess - March 2007
To get the best performance out of SQL Server, you need to oversee and maintain healthy indexes. New dynamic management views and functions give you a window into SQL Server to help you better understand how your indexes are functioning and discover potential performance issues.SQL Server: Achieve High Availability for SQL Server
Zach Nichter - March 2007
SQL Server 2005 offers a number of options to improve database availability, from replication to clustering to log shipping. We’ll take a closer look at the various options for configuring SQL Server and help you find out which ones are right for your environment.SQL Server: Simplify Database Maintenance with Table Partitions
Noah Gomez - March 2007
In the past, working with partitions and very large tables was a burdensome and tedious task, but with SQL Server 2005, table partitioning has gotten much simpler. Now you can easily create multiple partitions, move those partitions around, drop old partitions, and even change the way data is partitioned. Here’s how.SQL Server: Top Tips for SQL Server Clustering
Tom Moreau, PhD - March 2007
A server cluster provides failover capabilities, ensuring more uptime for your critical operations. But for a cluster to be effective, it must be implemented properly. Here are some key tips that will help you get your cluster up faster and keep it functioning reliably.SQL Q&A: Daylight Saving T ime, Server Memory, and More
Edited by Nancy Michell - March 2007Inside Microsoft.com: Getting Started with Database Mirroring
Saleem Hakani - March 2007
Database failure can be detrimental, causing loss of data and loss of productivity. Fortunately, SQL Server 2005 SP1 introduced a database mirroring feature that can prevent such a disaster. Here's what you need to know to create a hot standby database that you can switch to in case your production server ever goes offline.SQL Q&A: Database Size, Mirroring, Marked Transactions, and More
Edited by Nancy Michell - February 2007SQL Q&A: Data Archiving, Linked Servers, Measuring Bandwidth, and More
Edited by Nancy Michell - January 2007SQL Q&A: Preventing Reboots, Installing Multiple Updates, and More
Edited by Nancy Michell - December 2006SQL Q&A: Temp Tables, 64-bit Processing, Mirroring, and More
Edited By Nancy Michell - November 2006
Your queries answered by Microsoft IT professionals.SQL Q&A: Running in RAM, Agent Jobs, and More
Edited by Nancy Michell - October 2006SQL Q&A: Predicates, Stored Procedures, and More
Edited by Nancy Michell - September 2006SQL Q&A: Clusters, Snapshots, Log Shipping, and More
Edited by Nancy Michell - August 2006SQL Q&A: Monitoring DBAs, Replicating Sprocs, and More
Nancy Michell - July 2006
Your queries answered by Microsoft IT professionals.Inside Microsoft.com: Managing SQL Server 2005 Peer-to-Peer Replication
David Lindquist - July 2006
The Microsoft corporate Web sites rely heavily on databases, which power such high-traffic destinations as Microsoft® Update, Download Center, Communities, TechNet, and MSDN®. Microsoft. com operations has a team of 17 engineers, the SQL Server™ operations team, that manages these database systems.SQL Q&A: Server Tuning, Log Shipping, Mirroring, and More
Nancy Michell - May • June 2006
Your queries answered by Microsoft IT professionals.SQL Q&A: Runaway Log Files, SQL Server Instances, and More
Edited by Nancy Michell - March • April 2006
Your queries answered by Microsoft IT professionals.SQL Server 2005: Set the Stage for a Smooth Upgrade
Randy Dyess - January • February 2006SQL Server 2005: Boost Performance with New Features in SQL Server 2005
Paul Nielsen - January • February 2006SQL Server 2005: Protect your Metadata
Kalen Delaney - January • February 2006SQL Server 2005: Running the Microsoft SAP Infrastructure on SQL Server 2005
Mike Hatch - January • February 2006SQL Q&A: Clusters, Isolation, and More
Nancy Michell - January • February 2006
Your queries answered by Microsoft IT professionals.SQL Q&A: Monitoring Tools, Memory, and More
Nancy Michell - November • December 2005
Your queries answered by Microsoft IT professionals.SQL Server: Reduce Downtime: Implement SQL Server 2000 On A Cluster
Stephen Strong - Spring 2005
Running SQL Server 2000 on a Windows Server 2003 Server failover cluster will get you more uptime by alleviating your reliance on a single server.SQL Server: XML To The Max: Get More Power Out Of Your SQL Server
Ward Pond - Spring 2005
Using the SQL Server 2000 T-SQL syntax, you can manipulate XML in a variety of ways. For example, you can access data contained in an XML string passed into a stored procedure and produce XML output. Find out what these flexible, powerful XML features can do for you.SQL Server: Get A Traffic Report: Analyze Your Database Usage With System Tables
Matt Evans and Josh Moody - Spring 2005
By querying data from the master.sysprocesses table you can get almost any information you need about connections to your SQL database, what each process is doing, which processes are blocking, and lots more. Then you can use this data to create some truly enlightening reports.SQL Server: Async Lifestyle: Manage Your Tasks With Service Broker
Roger Wolter - Spring 2005
SQL Server 2005 Service Broker is more than just a developer tool. DBAs can use it to schedule tasks, run batch processing, and perform routine database maintenance.SQL Server: On The Horizon: Improved Data Security In SQL Server 2005
Don Kiely - Spring 2005
Microsoft has performed extensive threat modeling and security analysis to identify the threats facing database servers. This work has resulted in an upcoming version of SQL Server, SQL Server 2005, that is secure by design. This article enumerates the various security improvements to the popular database.SQL Q&A: Troubleshooting Connections, Using Variables, And More
Edited by Nancy Michell - Spring 2005
Your queries answered by Microsoft IT professionals.Beta Box: Discover SQL Server 2005 Express Edition
Brian Randell - Spring 2005
One of the most promising updates to a Microsoft product this year is SQL Server™ 2005 (formerly known by its code-name "Yukon"). SQL Server 2005 will come in a variety of versions, supporting many different types of deployments from the desktop to the enterprise datacenter.How IT Works: A Primer On SQL Joins
Joshua Trupin - Spring 2005
One of the trickiest things about learning SQL is mastering how various JOIN statements differ in the ways they combine data from multiple data tables. There are three types of joins: inner, outer, and cross.SQL Q&A: SQL Server Express, Encrypting Data, and More
Edited by Nancy Michell - Winter 2005
Your queries answered by Microsoft IT professionals.Post Mortem: Dissecting A Successful Campus Integration Project
Theresa Auricchio - Winter 2005
Two colleges in the City University of New York (CUNY) system needed to implement a student retention system. The system, a client/server application, would sit beside an IBM mainframe.