VSTSC's Community Server

Alright everyone has written the obligatory ''Hello World!'' program when they start to learn a new language.  I have my own variety of that practice and its PrimeFinder.  Whenever I start to learn a new language I write a program that finds primes.  I know this may sound a little strange but this normally allows me to practice a ...

This is a relatively short post about raising an error in T-SQL and having SSIS not recognize that error.  If you have an SSIS package that calls a SQL Task and that T-SQL for whatever reason ends up raising an error the SSIS package that called the T-SQL may complete with the step without error.    There may be two ...

Ok I'm not one to re-write standard system stored procedures for SQL Server.  That being said I have been working a good deal with files and file groups within SQL Server over the past few days moving data and indexes to files and file groups other than the default PRIMARY file group.  Sp_spaceUsed is great procedure for giving you ...

Ok, after putting up my first post on the Data Dictionary I had posters remorse.  There is a simple change that makes the script shown in the previous post a little more user friendly.  First the view metadata.columnsDataDictionary need to be changed from a SQL Select using a pivot to just a self join from the ...

Having a data dictionary is an invaluable resource for not only for the DBA but for anyone, report writers or developers who need to work on a database that you have to manage or have developed yourself.  A good amount of time can be saved from answering the same questions over and over again if you can point to ...

Alright have to give credit for this post to Andy because he is the one who pointed out how useful the Output Clause on an insert statement could be. Starting in SQL Server 2005 you could add an output clause to an insert, delete, or update statement to return information about the DML you just executed.  Below is a simple example that ...

Ok so maybe this isn't a project so much as a topic.  This will be the first in a series of post dealing with obscure t-sql commands from SQL Server 2000 thru 2008 that I find, that may be useful to other people.  Hopefully this will be a weekly series and allow me the opportunity to find new commands or find out more about commands I ...