This set of maintenance plans has been recommended by SQL Pros one too many times to ignore. If you have a rather standard environment, check out Ola Hallengren's scripts for SQL Server Backup, Integrity Check, Index and Statistics Maintenance. Actually, if you have a pretty high end environment, you can explore it as …

Recently, I updated my SharePoint 2010 RTM farm to SharePoint 2010 SP1. I followed the steps touched on here on my WFE. I had a good hour before the June Cumulative rollup would be finished downloading so I figured I'd run the Configuration Wizard on my WFE then go and upgrade my index server.

I was soon presented with …

While the process to create a site column based on external data is pretty straightforward, I wanted to document it here for myself; I keep forgetting that this can't be done using SharePoint Designer. Here's how to do it using your a browser:

Create your External Content Type and associated lists -> Site Actions …

I have a relational table in SQL Server that I access in SharePoint 2010 as an External Content Type. The table, disks, has an FK (serverID) that is associated with a PK in another table, servers, via an Association Operation. Once I create a list and add it to a webpage, I am unable to select the serverID column or …

Recently, I worked with a client who uses block level replication software (think XOSoft/ArcServ) for their clustered SQL Server databases. During proactive testing one night, replication was broken and the failover server was brought up. For the first time in years, the procedure failed and the primary application …

One of the biggest annoyances of SharePoint 2007 was the lack of a native ability to work directly with SQL Server tables. SharePoint 2010 has addressed that issue with External Content Types. ECT's combine the best of both worlds -- you can modify and manage tables as usual in SQL Server, and display them (somewhat) …

Recently, I had a database go into the dreaded SUSPECT mode after a failed byte-level replication. Once I brought it into EMERGENCY mode, an unknown, automated program immediately connected to it from several different servers.

Killing the connections and setting the db to single-user mode only created more headaches …

SQL Server 2008 has backup compression built-in, but for SQL Server 2005 and below, you can compress backups using makecab from the command line or xp_cmdshell. Makecab even has a better compression ratio than gzip and does not require additional software to be installed on the server.

makecab D:\backups\dbname.bak …

Sometimes, there's a need to schedule a "ping" to a webpage (that needs to be pre-compiled, for instance). While using PowerShell is the easiest way to do this, it's not always available on older server, while VBScript is nearly always a safe bet. The biggest issue with using VBScript or the command line is …

So here's an error that, at the time I encountered it, did not have a great deal of information about it on the web:

The system definition with the same name as this data source already exists in the Business Data Connectivity Metadata Store and it refers to a different data source. Cannot complete operation …