This article introduces Microsoft SQL Server developers to the international features of SQL Server 2000. Topics covered include an explanation of Unicode, SQL Server international data types, and key issues regarding implementation.

by Steve Jones I guess I could have called it "String Manipulation", but that was nowhere near as exciting as the other title. Often I find developers performing string manipulation in stored procedures and queries and chastise them for it. Using T-SQL is, IMHO, in general, a poor use of

New Version Lets You Store and Update Data on Handheld Devices by Paul Yao and David Durant Handheld device users need to be able to synchronize with a main data store when it's convenient and, preferably, when the back-end database server isn't busy. SQL Server 2000 Windows CE Editio

(Francesco Balena) SQL Server can be administered programmatically using system stored procedures, but Distributed Management Objects (DMO) offer a more modern, object-oriented alternative. This article introduces SQL-DMO in SQL Server 7.0 and SQL Server 2000 and describes the SQL-DMO object model,

by Justin Gunther As queries become more complex, temporary tables are used more and more. While temporary table may sometimes be unavoidable, they can often be sidestepped by using derived tables instead. In brief, a derived table is the result of using another SELECT statement in the FROM cla

A low-cost way to high availability Log shipping is a robust yet low-tech, low-cost way to achieve high availability and disaster protection in your SQL Server environment. Log shipping automatically ships—copies and restores—a production server's transaction logs to a standby server, which stan

by Neil Boyle The Index Tuning Wizard is a handy tool shipped as part of the SQL Server 7.0 and SQL Server 2000 Profiler that can analyze a set of SQL queries and suggest index changes that could improve their performance. Here, I will take a look at how to get the best results out of using the

by Michael Balloni – Relational databases, like Microsoft's SQL Server, use locks to prevent multiple users from making conflicting modifications to a set of data. When a set of data is locked by a user, no other users can modify that same set of data until the first user finishes modifying the

by Brad M. McGehee – Just as you can’t ever be “too thin or too rich,” there is also no such thing as a database that is "too fast". In fact, if you have been a DBA for long, the biggest grip you probably hear from most users is that the database is too slow. I doubt if any DBA […]

by Tony Bain – Full text indexing is a great feature that solves a long running database problem, the searching of textual data columns for specific words and phrases in SQL Server databases. However, as the full-text search engine is a separate component of SQL Server (it uses the Microsoft Search