Sometimes you become the accidental DBA, or you are the DBA by choice. Either way, you can choose to spend time working in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) to look at things such as backups or the ...

PowerShell gives DBAs a reason to begin using SMO for real, so now we'll find out about all the gory details I was talking to a good friend at Microsoft last week, telling him about the problems I’ve ...

SQL Server 2008 has a ton of new DBA features, but if you really want to make this thing go, just crank out a little code. SQL Server 2008 is mostly in the domain of system and database administrators ...

Last time we discussed creating a script that can retrieve configuration settings from a list of SQL Servers and placing that data into a SQL Server table. Now, let's take a look at another technology ...

SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) is the principal interface for working with Microsoft SQL Server. However, many subtleties of this powerful tool evade even the most seasoned professionals. Here ...

Russell Smith is a technology consultant and trainer specializing in management and security of Microsoft server and client technologies. He is a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer with more than 15 ...

The mssql extension for Visual Studio Code, used to support SQL Server connections and T-SQL editing, has been updated with IntelliCode functionality and a new Object Explorer, among other new ...

Although spanking new in Katmai, Policy-Based Management already seems mature. The inclusion of PowerShell will reinvent the way DBAs manage their environments by taking complicated cursors out of ...

I'm down on SQL Server Management Studio right now. I basically just spent a day trying to swap out the evaluation version of SQL Server 2008 R2 with the Express version, and SSMS just wouldn't ...