SQL Server Diaries

This week I had an interesting question: how to retrieve the structure of a table in XML format. [Read More]

This is another in a series of “scripts that generate scripts”; in this post I will be covering CHECK constraints. A CHECK constraint basically verifies that the value of the column it is checking evaluates to TRUE when the logical statement defining up the constraint is executed.  The definition of... [Read More]

After configuring Database Mail on a clustered SQL Server 2008 R2 instance using a script based on the Create a Database Mail profile in 4 Steps (or less) article, the test email was not delivered.  Some investigation showed that the email was actually not sent.  I also checked the Database... [Read More]

I was recently installing SQL Server 2008 R2 Standard Edition on a two-node failover cluster (see Features Supported by the Editions of SQL Server 2008 R2 on MSDN).  The cluster was working perfectly and the Validate a Cluster Configuration Wizard reported all components in green. I had prepared a slipstreamed... [Read More]

Once the target environment is installed and configured, a database migration cannot commence before the database and the table structures that will hold the new data are in place.  Creating table definitions can be performed using various methods, a couple of which are tools provided with SQL Server, and third-party... [Read More]