I know the ideal Enterprise network won't have any SQL Server Express instances, but every large network that I've ever worked on has at least a few. Many times, it's powering apps like SolarWinds or BackupExec. Since SQL Express doesn't run SQL Agent, it can be a pain to backup and maintain the systems.

There are a …

Update: You can't even independently schedule slave jobs. Count my organization as yet another that won't be implementing MultiServer Administration. Grrr.

I always forget about Multiserver Administration. I've actually never worked in an environment that uses it, even though it seems to have a lot of potential. I …

Over the past couple weeks, I've looked into a number of ways of parsing and importing Windows Forwarded Events into SQL Server: from using SSIS to LogParser to PowerShell to setting up a linked server to the "Forwarding Events.evtx" file.

Ultimately, the only thing that worked was PowerShell's Get-WinEvent …

I recently assisted in migrating a very large system from SQL Server 2005 SP3 to SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1.  The actual migration of the database went off without a hitch, but we soon encountered an odd error with the application querying a view over a linked server.

The application was web-based and began throwing an …

I'm currently working on a project where I need to quickly make pretty graphs and charts for data in small but important SharePoint lists. After looking through a number of books and consulting with my SharePoint buddies, PowerPivot for SharePoint 2010 seems to be the best tool for the job.

Getting it to work hasn't …