If you export values from SQL Server to Excel, NULL values should become empty cells in the spreadsheet without any conversion at all. However, I suspect that you want to...

If you need all the rows from table A with (optional) matching rows from table B and also certain rows from table B you could use a full outer join:

select...

Hello Jeff,

Thank you so much for posting this solution! We will apply your method in a SSIS Derived Column Transformation on data coming from raw files. This data needs to...

It's even harder when you're hired by a customer to handle the health care data of all their customers. Sometimes you run into the conflict between serving your customer and...

Sorry, I forgot the include the quote:

sql.varun (10/7/2009)

I have a question on Joins.Can anyone help me.

When I run below query it is running for 40 mins as it is...

Since the 'or' operator has lower precedence as the 'and' operator, when you ommit the parentheses the join condition means something completely different. Without parentheses the predicate behind the 'or'...

Hello Charles Kincaid,

Some statements you made in your article are not entirely correct. The log backup chain does not start when you make the first database backup, it starts when...

Every serious SQL task, wether it's OLTP or OLAP, has to deal with some nasty rotating plate along a tiny magnetic core: the hard disk! More memory solves this problem...

I've seen this problem more often on SQL 2005 than on SQL 2000 instances, but I must agree servers tend to get more cores everyday. On some instances used mainly...

If you buy a car, you have a very limited set of options compared to everything that is already part of that make or model; maybe another radio, or some...

First my compliments to you for an excelent article.

Relational databases have their foundation in the mathematical theory of tuples and sets. You might think that today's engines are miles away...

Great article! I will use it to uncover flaws in the back-up procedure at the various companies I perform regulare DBA tasks, as most of it not only applies to...

SANs are very good in delivering large amounts of data very fast. But SQL Server needs a whole lot of small i/o requests handled quickly, without messing around with the...

In practice, as a DBA I am more involved with SANs than I should be, knowing a lot more about them than I should know. SQL Server has been and...