SQL Server Articles

Behind the scenes Backpressure (where source is fast and destination is slow) is an internal memory limiter inside SSIS of SQL Server 2008. If a source or an asynchronous component is too fast (compared to the transformations or destination down the path), the source is suspended when its execution tree gets too many buffers (currently [...]

The SQL Server Surface Area Configuration Tool (SQLSAC) was a utility introduced by Microsoft in SQL Server 2005 to help SQL Server Database Administrators or Developers manually turn on features which are off by default in the product. The previous article titled Using the SQL Server 2005 Surface Area Configuration Tool explains how database administrators or [...]

One common approach to defining data quality is data profiling. A data profile is a collection of aggregate statistics about data that may include the number of rows in the Customer table, the number of distinct values in the State column, the number of null or missing values in the Zip column, the distribution of [...]

The article titled New Features in SQL Server 2008 Management Studio – Part 1 discussed new features such as Activity Monitor, Intellisense Support and Region Outlining that are available in SQL Server 2008 Management Studio. The second article New Features in SQL Server 2008 Management Studio – Part 2 discussed more new interesting features such as [...]

This article is part 2 of a 5 part series that explores the SSIS features introduced in SQL Server 2008.  Focussing on Lookup Transformations in SSIS 2008. Lookup transformations are one of the most widely used transformations in the SSIS; Microsoft have recognised this and thus have improved it better performance. For example: In SQL Server [...]

The last series of articles covered topics about SSIS architecture, SSIS buffer management, types of transformation and how it relates to execution tree, parallel processing and considerations for SSIS on 64-bit computers. This aided to understand the SSIS architecture and its inner functions, it also assists in development of better performing packages, troubleshooting SSIS issues [...]

The previous article titled New Features in SQL Server 2008 Management Studio – Part 1 discussed some of the new features available in SQL Server 2008 Management Studio; namely Activity Monitor, Intellisense Support and Region Outlining. This article continues to explore the new features available within SQL Server 2008 Management Studio (SSMS).  These features can be used by database [...]

SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) is a graphical tool which can be used by Database Developers and Database Administrators to perform development and administrative tasks on SQL Server 2008. SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) tool was first introduced by Microsoft in SQL Server 2005. SSMS is a replacement for Query Analyzer, Analysis Manager & Enterprise [...]

This article is the final article in a 4 part series that explores the internals of SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS). This article examines parallel processing and performance optimization. Parallel Processing Parallel execution improves performance on computers that have multiple physical or logical processors. To support parallel execution of different tasks in the package, SSIS uses [...]

This article is part 3 of a 4 part series that explores the internals of SQL Server Integration Services.  This article looks at Buffer Management in SSIS. SSIS Buffer Management As explained in the last article, the data flow engine requires a buffer (a buffer is a managed storage object that holds the data in memory) [...]