Working On SQL Admin Hacks, Tips and Tricks

I haven't posted for a while because I have been working on SQL Admin Hacks, Tips and Tricks lately. it is still a work in progress but below is what is on the wiki currently. It is not yet categorized but we will do that once we get more of these hacks done. To see what it will look like when it is done take a look at the SQL Server Programming Hacks

Can you think of any admin stuff you would like to see? This is what we have right now

Find Primary Keys and Columns Used in SQL Server
Get The Domain Name Of Your SQL Server Machine With T-SQL
Grant Execute/SELECT Permissions For All User Defined Functions To A User
Grant Execute Permissions For All Stored Procedures To A User
Kill All Active Connections To A Database
SQL Server 2008: When Was The Server Last Started?
Check If Auto Update Statistics Is Enabled By Using DATABASEPROPERTY
Three Way To List All Databases On Your Server
Generate A List Of Object Types By Using OBJECTPROPERTY
How to find all the tables and views in a database
Find Out Server Roles For a SQL Server Login
Which Service Pack Is Installed On My SQL Server
Test SQL Server Login Permissions With SETUSER
Login failed for user 'sa'. Reason: Not associated with a trusted SQL Server connection. SQL 2000
Login failed for user 'sa'. Reason: Not associated with a trusted SQL Server connection. SQL 2005
Compare Tables With Tablediff
Find All Tables Without Triggers In SQL Server
Find All Tables With Triggers In SQL Server
Create Stored Procedures That Run At SQL Server Startup
Cycle The SQL Server Error Log
How to read sql server error messages
Use OBJECT_DEFINITION To Track SQL Server Stored Procedure Changes
SQL Compare Without The Price Tag
How To Get The Database Name For The Current User Process
How To Find Out Which Columns Have Defaults And What Those Default Values Are
Fixing Cannot add, update, or delete a job that originated from an MSX Server Error after renaming a server

SQL Server 2008 Release Candidate 0 Available To The General Public For Download

SQL Server 2008 Release Candidate 0 has been made available to the general public.

There are 2 versions (and 3 flavors of each) ISO or DVD

Download it here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=35F53843-03F7-4ED5-8142-24A4C024CA05&displaylang=en

Don't forget to also visit the SQL Server 2008 Release Candidate 0 connect site here: https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/content/content.aspx?ContentID=5395

Puzzle: Friday the Thirteenths

There is a puzzle on LessThanDot

The goal is to identify all friday the thirteenths for a given timeframe. We'll use a relatively small number of years, like 10. This should make it a little easier in procedural languages.

I posted my SQL solution, what about you?

Go here: Friday the Thirteenths and show me what you got. Make sure to use the [hide][/hide] tags so you don't spoil it for other people

Less Than Dot A New community Site Has Been Launched

Myself and a bunch of friends have been working on Less Than Dot for a while now. The site has a forum, blogs and a wiki. More info why we started Less Than Dot and who we are can be found here: http://www.lessthandot.com/aboutus.php

Since I am mostly a SQL guy, I wrote a collection of SQL Server hacks. This collection of SQL hacks is available on the Wiki, right now we have 8 sections and between 70 and 80 hacks. Ideally we will have more hacks and we will also have a SQL admin hacks page in the future.

SQL Server Hacks Sections
* 1 NULLS
* 2 Dates
* 3 Sorting, Limiting Ranking, Transposing and Pivoting
* 4 Handy tricks
* 5 Pitfalls
* 6 Query Optimization
* 7 Undocumented but handy
* 8 Usefull Admin stuff For The Developer


Below are some direct links to a couple hacks, you can also get a list of all the hacks on the wiki itself here: SQL Server Programming Hacks

Trouble With ISDATE And Converting To SMALLDATETIME
Row To Column (PIVOT)
Column To Row (UNPIVOT)
Five ways to return all rows from one table which are not in another table
Order IP Addresses
Use XACT_STATE() To Check For Doomed Transactions
Three differences between COALESCE and ISNULL
Case sensitive search
Use the sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats dmv to check if indexes are being used

Hopefully you will like the site and find some good content, if you have a question then don't hesitate to ask it in a forum.