All Articles - SQL Authority with Pinal Dave

SQL SERVER – Fast Track Data Warehouse for SQL Server 2008

June 26, 2010

Best Practices, Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing

I recently attended a wonderful training session organized by Microsoft on Fast Track Data Warehouse Reference Architectures. If you are regular reader of my blog, you will be well aware of the fact that I am more of the Relational guy than a Business Intelligence professional. I was initially a…

SQLAuthority News – Download – Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Best Practices Analyzer

June 25, 2010

Pinal Dave

SQL, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks

Best Practices, SQL Documentation, SQL Download

Microsoft has released wonderful tool SQL Server 2008 R2 Best Practices Analyzer. I have previously used this tool and found it quite helpful. Here is the latest version which you can download from MS site. Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Best Practices Analyzer However, I received quite a few emails…

SQLAuthority News – Meeting Bryan Oliver and Learning Wisdom of Life

June 24, 2010

Pinal Dave

Personal, SQL, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News

Database, SQL User Group

During my most recent travel outside India, I was fortunate enough to meet Bryan Oliver. I have heard a lot about him but never had chance to meet him in person. Just like we all do for someone we never met before, I had already some preconceived notions about him.…

SQLAuthority News – Guest Post – SELECT * FROM XML – Jacob Sebastian

June 23, 2010

Pinal Dave

SQL, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks

SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL XML

One of the most common problem SQL Server developers face while dealing with XML is related to writing the correct XPath expression to read a specific value from an XML document. I usually get a lot of questions by email, on my blog or in the forums which looks like the following:

SQLAuthority News – Price List – Oracle vs SQL Server

June 22, 2010

Pinal Dave

SQL, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News

SQL Download

During one of the consulting project, I was asked to prove that the SQL Server is a more economical choice than Oracle. Well, I do not want to start again the battle, which has been clearly won by SQL Server. Summary: SQL Server is a feature-rich and economical choice compared…

SQL SERVER – TRANSACTION, DML and Schema Locks

June 21, 2010

Pinal Dave

SQL, SQL Interview Questions and Answers, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks

SQL Scripts, SQL Stored Procedure, SQL Transactions

Today we will be going over a simple but interesting concept. Many a time, I have come across the lack of understanding on how the transactions work in SQL Server. Today we will go over a small but interesting observation. One of my clients had recently invited me to help…

SQL SERVER – Free Download – SQL Server 2008 R2 Update for Developers Training Kit

June 20, 2010

Pinal Dave

SQL, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News

SQL Documentation, SQL Download, SQL Training

SQL Server 2008 R2 is released and have been a stable product since the day it is released. I have not received any complains or rants from any of my customers who has upgraded to this version. The number one request is how one can learn about the new features…

SQLAuthority News – Delivering Two SQL Sessions at SQL Data Camp at Chennai – July 17, 2010

June 19, 2010

Pinal Dave

SQL, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News

SQL Index, SQL Spatial, SQLAuthority Author Visit

SQL Server Community is very strong community world-wide. In India SQL is considered as one of the most popular technology. Chennai is the only city in India where there are more than 3 SQL Server MVPs are from. My MVP friends has arranged one of the very first whole day…

SQLAuthority News – Interview with SQL Server MVP Madhivanan – A Real Problem Solver

June 18, 2010

Pinal Dave

SQL, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks

MVP

Madhivanan (SQL Server MVP) is a real community hero. He is known for his two skills – 1) Help Community and 2) Help Community. I have met him many times and every time I feel if anybody in online world needs help Madhivanan does his best to reach them out…

SQL SERVER – Data Pages in Buffer Pool – Data Stored in Memory Cache

June 17, 2010

Pinal Dave

SQL, SQL Performance, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks

SQL DMV, SQL Scripts

This will drop all the clean buffers so we will be able to start again from there. Now, run the following script and check the execution plan of the query. Have you ever wondered what types of data are there in your cache? During SQL Server Trainings, I am usually…