One of the quietly announced (at MIX - WMV here) new things coming from Microsoft ''soon'' is SQL Server Data Services (SSDS).  The SSDS team has a blog on MSDN.  Ryan Dunn discussed it with me recently and also has been blogging about it.  Last week he announced the release of PhluffyFotos, a sample site built on top of SSDS.  ...

I thought I mention this, since these types of tools are rarely needed, but when they are, they are also seriously saving your ass. :-) SQL Log Rescue is basically undo tool which analyzes transaction logs of your SQL Server database and allows you to undo and redo transactions. You can for example restore the 100 million rows you ...

Aspose.Words for Reporting Services is a rendering extension for Microsoft SQL Server 2000, 2005 and 2008 Reporting Services (32 bit & 64 bit). It allows you to export your RDL reports to flow layout documents and provides comprehensive support for exporting them to DOCX, DOC, RTF and WordprocessingML formats. All RDL report features including ...

For Lake Quincy Media's AdSignia Ad Server, I wanted to be able to ensure that the database had some internal logic rules checked periodically.  What kinds of rules?  Well, probably an example would be best.  Suffice to say up front, though, that we're talking about more than NOT NULL or enforcing referential integrity.  For ...

I ran into this very annoying issue earlier this week, that my buddy and SQL guru Gregg Stark was able to track down for me.  I have a fairly intense XtraReport report that gets its data from a stored procedure.  When I run that stored procedure in SQL Management Studio, it returns in less than a second.  When I run it on my web ...

Today I need to set up a new database for a new web site I'm working on.  Last week, I saw Rick's post about the ''mousercise'' that defines the typical table set up in SQL Server 2000 and 2005's table designer.  I have to admit that I completely relate to his feelings, and what made his post better still was that in addition to raising ...

I've just started using Web Developer 2008 Express. I've used Visual Studio C# 2003/2005 express a little. Frankly, I'm trying to decide if I should move from Delphi to MS. To make matters a little more difficult for me is that I'm just a guy who has always wanted to be a programmer when he grows up, lol. 1) Can you help me ...

I often write queries in SQL Server Management Studio to find different bits of information about which I am curious. This is quite easy and I discover a lot of useful and interesting things this way. You might ask why I am writing this blog post. I'll first say that I try to share these little tidbits with others. Sure I could bring people over ...

Temporary tables and table variables can be used in pretty much the same way. One question which is asked, ''Which one is better''. To answer that it is important to understand a few of the differences between the two. Once we understand how these two types of tables are different we will better understand which we need to use when. ...

I recently wrote some SQL which would do some work for a single day, but I wanted my code to be able to run once for each day in a date range. Luckily for me, I read Gregg Stark's SQL Blog. He recently posted about how to Iterate Over a List of Dates using a Numbers table in SQL. The SQL he gives is pretty much a cookie cutter solution to the ...