SQL Server A to Z – CPU-Z

How fitting that I should close out the A to Z series while I close out the year.В  We’ve finally arrived at letter Z and that stands for the CPU-Z utility.В  Yes, technically that isn’t a part of SQL Server, but if you hadn’t already noticed by Monday’s ‘Y’ post, it’s slim pickins’ at this [...]

December 29, 2011  Tags: , , ,   Posted in: General  No Comments

SQL Server A to Z – YEAR

Welcome to the penultimate installment of SQL Server A to Z (it’s not often I get to use “penultimate”). Officially, Y stands for Year, but that would be kinda boring, and quite short, so let’s run with it and talk about all sorts of date-parts-related stuff. Functions that get parts of dates Since this is, [...]

December 26, 2011  Tags: , , ,   Posted in: T-SQL  No Comments

SQL Server A to Z – XML

I can’t believe it’s already December.В  This year has just flown by.В  The rush of holiday events has already started, everyone at work is pushing to have their projects completed before the end of the year.В  It’s a madhouse, I tell ya.В  I’ll be honest, though, for all the running around, I love this time [...]

December 8, 2011  Tags: ,   Posted in: Features  No Comments

SQL Server A to Z – Waits

In the world of SQL Server, a process is either running, runnable, or waiting. A running process is, obviously, running; it’s the one getting CPU time. A runnable process has everything it needs to run, it’s just waiting for its turn on the CPU. A process that’s waiting, however, is one that needs some resource [...]

November 28, 2011  Tags: ,   Posted in: Troubleshooting  No Comments

SQL Server A to Z – Views

Happy Wednesday folks! Hope everyone’s having a great week. This episode of SQL Server A to Z is brought to you by the letter V, and V stands for vacation views! What is a view? A view is a “virtual table” that contains columns from one or more tables. Although you can query it like [...]

November 16, 2011  Tags: ,   Posted in: General, T-SQL  No Comments