SQL Server Diaries

In Malta, the Super 5 lottery prize has always been considered the peak of winnings by the Maltese.  So much so that it has become part of the day-to-day language when referring to good luck (I feel I just won the Super 5!).  As a challenge, I thought of how... [Read More]

An excellent article posted by Il-Sung Lee (Program Manager, SQL Server Protocols) at Understanding “login failed” (Error 18456) error messages in SQL Server 2005 describes the various error message severity levels. [Read More]

According to the Selecting an Account for the SQL Server Agent Service, the SQL Server Agent service account should be able to authenticate with the instance and also be a memeber of the sysadmin fixed server role. [Read More]

When creating an SQL Server Agent job with one or more steps, each step can be configured to write the query output to a log file.  If the job failes, such a log can assist a DBA identify the cause of the failure.  That is, if the log is still... [Read More]

Accurate documentation is paramount for any system. Unfotunately, when developing a database we sometimes tend to overlook this particular document. [Read More]