I’m just starting to explore SQL Server 2008 Clustering and hit this issue when trying to install Windows Server 2008 (64 Bit) in VirtualBox. The below screen, with "Windows failed to start" error, reared its ugly head shortly after booting off the ISO image. Thankfully the solution is quick and easy (once you’ve found it) [...]

Sadly, as people don’t make sense, we have to make compromises in our systems and processes. I recently had a requirement, in an SSIS package, to be able to identify which days were Bank Holidays and take a different course of action, e.g. not run the main process. Here’s an illustration of the approach I [...]

This week I was tasked with testing a stored procedure that was meant to output data on certain days. This was over a 120 day period, so I wanted to find some automated way of doing this, rather than changing the server date manually for each execution. The method I came up with involves the [...]

So exactly what is a computed column? MSDN has this to say A computed column is computed from an expression that can use other columns in the same table. The expression can be a noncomputed column name, constant, function, and any combination of these connected by one or more operators. The expression cannot be a [...]