"If at first you don't succeed..." Apparently the cool new conclusion to this motto is "throw your hands in the air and panic".  This is certainly how the SQL 2008 Management Studio reacts when it encounters a problem enumerating object explorer information for one or more databases on a server.  I recently installed the SQL 2008 tools and was quite surprised to encounter an error dialog following my first actions.  I connected to a server that contains several databases, only a few of which I have rights to access.  Upon expanding the Databases node in the Object Explorer window, I received...

When is % not equal to %?  When you're using the LIKE statement in SQL Server Reporting Services.  If you've used the LIKE statement but haven't felt the love, it's because the standard wild-card operator (%) for a LIKE statement isn't the same in SSRS.  Instead of the  % operator they use *. So the statement:  WHERE Customer.Email LIKE '%' + @qEmail + '%' should instead be:  WHERE Customer.Email LIKE '*' + @qEmail + '*'

I recently got the chance to learn about a technology that has interested me for quite some time: SQL dependencies.  The premise of my encounter with SqlDependency was to create a smarter cache.  The project I'm currently working on was employing a sliding expiration policy to invalidate the contents of a cache of database lookup values and I proposed some research be conducted into using SQL dependencies to automatically invalidate the cache items when the corresponding database contents were changed.  I had experimented with the SQL dependency classes when .NET 2.0 was first released using a test SQL 2000 database.  The example I was...

Of recent interest to me has been the ability to deploy user-defined managed functions, stored procedures, and other objects to SQL from within Visual Studio 2005. With the .NET CLR in SQL Server 2005, these managed functions can be written and deployed from within Visual Studio, even as part of an automated build process. In wanting to investigate this further, I've decided to write a few articles on how this technique is used and on how it may be useful to you. When I first heard about the ability to (essentially) deploy .NET assemblies into SQL Server and then have...