Automated Database Scripting to Preserve Intellectual Property

Copies of live database are frequently hosted on development servers. In some cases these occupy several Megabytes or Gigabytes of disk storage. This is acceptable for the duration of the project development, testing (and other uses) however it might not be feasible, both from an economical as well as security... [Read More]

Grant Priviliges to a Computer/Machine Account - Why?!

I was recently involved in the implementation of an SQL Server environment that would host the database for a Microsoft Service Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) deployment.  My expertiese was required to prepare the SQL Server instance and make reccomendations for performance, sizing, and of course security, which I did.  The... [Read More]

Fresh outlook to Auditing and Monitoring of User Activity using Traces

I recently wrote about auditing SQL Server instances using Traces, and after reviewing the solution with a “fresh” mindset I saw features that were missed during the research which led to a previous article.  Today’s post shows how to limit the auditing to UPDATE, INSERT and DELETE events (see note/insert... [Read More]

Against the "sp_" Stored Procedure Naming Convention

It has been in the SQL Server Books Online since the 2000 version was published, and a considerable number of articles have been written against the use of the “sp_” stored procedure naming convention. What I cannot understand is why newly written stored procedures are being pushed for deployment using... [Read More]