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[Focus]

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Building Better BI in SQL Server 2005
Microsoft General Manager of SQL Server Business Intelligence Bill Baker spoke to SQL Server Magazine about the new BI features in SQL Server 2005 and how they can help you streamline delivery of business-critical information.
 — Editors

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[Features]

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Data Mining Reloaded
The data-mining functionality in SQL Server 2005 is greatly expanded and highly flexible. Take a look at what you can expect in--and do with--the new Analysis Services.
 — Alexei Bocharov , et al.


Hide Database Changes
Maintaining and changing a database schema is hard when you have applications that depend on the original schema. But you can use stored procedures and views to hide your database changes from your applications--and give you a cleaner schema to work with.
 — Mark D. Scott

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[SQL Server Savvy]

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Avoid Using Trace Flag 2861 to Cache Zero-Cost Query Plans
Trace flag 2861 causes SQL Server to cache query plans for trivial queries that have a cost of zero or close to zero.
 — Brian Moran


Fn_virtualfilestats() Function Reports Reads and Writes
Find out what the number of reads and writes reported by the fn_virtualfilestats() system function mean.
 — Brian Moran


Forcing a Parallel Plan
Can you force SQL Server to use a parallel plan instead of a serial one?
 — Brian Moran


Last_Batch in Master..Sysprocesses
What does it mean when you see a value of 1900-01-01 00:00:00.000 in master..sysprocesses' last_batch column?
 — Brian Moran


Stored Procedure Runtime
A particular stored procedure generally runs in 5 seconds; however, when multiple users run the query at the same time, it takes nearly five times as long to run all the queries.
 — Brian Moran

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[Editorial]

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A Tale of Two CLRs
IBM's DB2 UDB 8.2 may have gotten .NET integration first, but Microsoft and SQL Server 2005 got it right.
 — Michael Otey

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[Inside SQL Server]

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Implicit or Explicit Index Keys
Why would you add redundant columns to a nonclustered index? Find out in this examination of index behavior.
 — Kalen Delaney

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[Solutions by Design]

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Practicing Data Porting
After you understand how to properly structure tables for keyword lookups, you need to transfer the old data to a new database. Learn how by walking through this example that shows you how to port data from a keyword array into new, normalized tables.
 — Michelle A. Poolet

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[T-SQL Black Belt]

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Nonexistent Ranges
Anybody can find a group of dates that exist, but you'll need to do some deep thinking to create a query that returns a group of nonexistent date ranges.
 — Itzik Ben-Gan


PIVOT on Steroids
Build a better PIVOT operator by encapsulating workarounds in a powerful procedure that uses dynamic SQL.
 — Itzik Ben-Gan

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[Letters]

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Letters, February 2005
Readers write in about SQL Server Magazine's 2004 Salary and Industry survery and more!
 — Readers

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[New Products]

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New Products, February 2005
Check out the latest SQL Server-related products.
 — Dawn Cyr

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[SELECT TOP(X)]

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ADO.NET 2.0
News about data-access technology has taken a back seat to server news lately. But here are six important changes in ADO.NET 2.0.
 — Michael Otey

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[Ask Microsoft]

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Active/Passive vs. Active/Active Clustering
Microsoft's Richard Waymire explains the difference between these two types of failover clustering.
 — Microsoft's SQL Server Development Team

Building Dynamic IN Lists
Microsoft's Patrick Conlan shows how to construct a variable that contains an SQL query, then execute it via sp_executesql or EXEC().
 — Microsoft's SQL Server Development Team