Enforcing your data’s integrity is probably the single most important issue you face when designing a database. Validating user input is one way of keeping bad data from making its way into your analysis and reports. It only takes one piece of bad data to throw everything off. It’s serious business and there are no shortcuts — mistakes, even innocent ones, are just too easy to make. It’s just too easy to enter one too many zeros or enter “6heodore” instead of “Theodore.” Granted, you can’t stop every single mistake at the input stage, but it’s the best place to start. (We are working with SQL Server Express because it’s free and easy to use, but the concept and examples are valid in SQL Server.)
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The sp_lock system stored procedure is a great tool for checking the amount of locking that occurs on your database system. It returns the number and types of locks that are being held by current active SQL Server sessions. One of my previous articles describes how you can use sp_lock to diagnose problems on your SQL Server.

There are, however, a few drawbacks to sp_lock. The results it returns are not very straightforward to the novice DBA. It does a great job showing what session is causing the largest number of locks on the system, but it does not show you much accompanying detail of those objects or sessions. You could create custom scripts to look up that information, but those results tend to be complicated, and the detail is mediocre at best. There were other system tables that you could use to look up lock information, such as syslockinfo, but that detail isn’t all that great either. Another huge drawback is that sp_lock and syslockinfo are deprecated features, so they may not be included in future SQL Server releases. SQL Server 2005 includes new dynamic management views that contain a lot of locking detail and make it easy to correlate locking information to make it much more meaningful.

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Here are the latest DCT2SQL templates.

They are also available at http://www.clariondeveloper.net just search for dct2sql in the search box.

A pervasive template has been added. The metabase_mimer template has been updated. And the postgreSQL template continues to receive enhancements. There have been a couple of utility templates added.

PS
And, as always, at PAR2 also.

I am pleased to announce this new version available to all : many NEW features to help you in your work have been added.

Version released 5th Dec 2007
1.. Added support of XML files as DESTINATION and as Source Raw Data as is export also
2.. Added feature to Clone to TPS from any source Table - All the data contained in the source Table can be transferred after mappings are done
3.. Added feature of editing the Structure of both Source and Destination Tables : You can even use this txt file to add it in your dictionary if need be (with a small modification)
4.. Added an extra Tab (Assign Q) which opens up after Transfer is done showing all columns used and the respective values found for the last
scanned record
5.. Added DBF overred Field support : if a field placed over another one is larger then the ‘root’ field size is dynamically changed
6.. Added for Basic - CSV files a parser to replace any illegal character in column names
7.. Added for Basic - CSV files a process to adapt automatically to the biggest length of field found in the file (a one pass process)
8.. Added feature that both Source and Destination tables are automatically cloned to TPS - this let’s you access an empty TPS table as a copy of your tables
9.. GROUPS with DATE & TIME fields are better visibly shown when found (icons) and all unusable (depending on driver) columns are placed at the bottom of the mapping list
10.. GROUPS with DATE & TIME fields are now automatically prohibited from being used in ODBC driver destination mappings
11.. When a KEY has ascending or descending defined an different icon will reflect it for better understanding
12.. When during any non ODBC Transfer of Data, errors occur, they will be logged to a txt file which will popup automatically at the end of the process
13.. If Opening or Reading a Source or Destination File is impossible an error message will popup and the process will be stopped
14.. Added feature for empty passwords in ODBC connections
15.. Corrected bug when not using a Port in ODBC connection
16.. Small bug fixes …
The docs have been updated of course to reflect all those changes

Data Management Center
A tool which let’s you Import Export Transfer your data so easily …

Free SQL Server tools that might make your life a little easier
It’s download time!

For those interested : Free book on SQL 2005 for Developers
Please click on the “No thanks, jus the EBook, please” hyperlink on the right side to avoid downloading the trial.

The SQL Server Driver for PHP is designed to enable reliable, scalable integration with SQL Server for PHP applications deployed on the Windows platform. The Driver for PHP is a PHP 5 extension that allows the reading and writing of SQL Server data from within PHP scripts. It provides a procedural interface for accessing data in all Editions of SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2000 (including Express Edition), and makes use of PHP features, including PHP streams to read and write large objects.
Source: Microsoft

I want to preface that you can move logins from one SQL Server to another SQL Server in many different ways. In my experience, I have found that this is the easiest way to move logins from one SQL Server to another SQL Server while keep existing passwords.
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Below are 10 SQL Server functions that are hardly used but should be used a lot more
I will go in more detail later on but here is a list of the ten functions that I am talking about

BINARY_CHECKSUM
SIGN
COLUMNPROPERTY
DATALENGTH
ASCII, UNICODE
NULLIF
PARSENAME
STUFF
REVERSE
GETUTCDATE

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PS
Special tnx for Mike Pickus

The codegearguru.com publish the SQL video guide.
You can see Part One, Two, Three, Four for now.

The Firebird Project team is pleased to announce the release of Firebird V.2.0.2. Download kits should be making their way through to the mirrors now. Kits and release notes can be accessed HERE.
Source: Firebird News

A move on Wednesday by the manufacturers of the open source MySQL database to shut off access to the source code of its commercial edition MySQL Enterprise Server, has led to a new round of debate in the open source community over whether the group is gradually abandoning its commitment to free software.
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In the simplest terms, a NULL value represents an unknown value. It’s unknown in the sense that the value is: missing from the system, may not be applicable in the current situation, or might be added later. NULL values are different than any other value and are sometimes hard to compare and handle.
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SQL Server 2005 has added encryption capabilities to the platform, much to the delight of many DBAs. However setting up encryption can be confusing and difficult for most DBAs. New author Mike Good brings us a perspective from someone who is brand new to this set of features and has spent time working through the functions and documenting them for the rest of us.
Read more (Free registration required)

The SQL Server 2005 Best Practices Analyzer (BPA) gathers data from Microsoft Windows and SQL Server configuration settings. BPA uses a predefined list of SQL Server 2005 recommendations and best practices to determine if there are potential issues in the database environment.

This download is the July 2007 release of SQL Server 2005 Best Practices Analyzer.

Download page