---

[Focus]

---

2005 Readers' Choice Awards
Get an overview of the Readers' Choice Awards program and see which vendors took the top 5 honors in this year's contest.
 — Dianne Russell


A Close Race for SQL Server Books and Training Courses
SQL Server professionals need technical resources that provide quality, in-depth content in an easy-to-digest format. Readers' Choice voters selected winners in two technical-resource categories.
 — Jessica Heckathorn


Administrative Tools Keep SQL Server Running Smoothly
Administrative tools can make a SQL Server DBA's job heaven or hell. Find out which products our readers voted as the most help in managing their servers.
 — Editors


ADO, XML, and IDEs: Full-Featured Tools Spell Success for Developers
Readers choose their favorite developer tools.
 — Dawn Cyr


Beef Up Your Security with These Top Products
The proliferation of interconnected applications sharing data across intranets and the Internet, makes security more crucial than ever to organizations of all types. The following winning products help make databases and their applications more secure.
 — Jessica Heckathorn


Dell and EMC Offer Top Storage Solutions
Capacity, availability, and speed are the most important considerations when choosing storage products. Readers' Choice voters chose Dell and EMC products as their top storage solutions.
 — Jessica Heckathorn


Dell Products Rule Hardware
Available in a seemingly endless array of memory, networking, storage, processor, and expandability options, Readers' Choice voters selected Dell server systems because they best suited their needs.
 — Jessica Heckathorn


Governmental Requirements Push Data-Protection Vendors to Comply
Readers chose disaster-prevention and recovery tools that help them comply with governmental legislation for data protection.
 — Dawn Cyr


Practical BI: Tools at Hand Are Tools of Choice
Voters choose Microsoft's built-in BI tools as their favorites.
 — Dawn Cyr

---

[Features]

---

Developing Familiarity with BI
SQL Server 2005’s BI tools might seem intimidating to relational database developers. But three new tasks offer and easy introduction to automating data analysis and data mining.
 — Brian Larson


Snare Those Errors
Error handling is an essential part of T-SQL code, but the use and misuse of error-handling routines is poorly understood. Use these error-handling templates to avoid pitfalls and catch errors before they snag your production code.
 — Phillip Yale

---

[SQL Server Savvy]

---

Indexed Views in SQL Server
It is possible to use an indexed view in SQL Server Standard Edition.
 — Brian Moran


Using Sp_configure To Change a Value Will Issue DBCC FREEPROCCACHE
Many people don't know that using sp_configure to change a configuration value causes SQL Server to issue a DBCC FREEPROCCACHE statement.
 — Brian Moran

---

[Editorial]

---

The SQL Server Steamroller
In sharp contrast to most of Microsoft and the computer industry in general, SQL Server posted double-digit growth numbers for Q3 2005. This marked the 11th straight quarter that SQL Server achieved double-digit revenue growth.
 — Michael Otey

---

[Inside SQL Server]

---

Seek and You Shall Find
There’s so much to know about metadata in SQL Server 2005—and plenty of changes, too. How do you find everything you’re looking for?
 — Kalen Delaney

---

[Solutions by Design]

---

Performance-Tuning the Data Model: Thinner is Better
In an optimized data model, thin tables give good performance because lean tables require fewer I/O rounds and less storage space. To improve your database performance, take a look at the “thinner is better” concept and learn how to put tables on a diet.
 — Michelle A. Poolet

---

[T-SQL Black Belt]

---

Don’t Avoid the UNKNOWN
The concepts of NULL and UNKNOWN are difficult to understand, especially in T-SQL code. However, if you become familiar with their subtleties, they can be quite useful.
 — Itzik Ben-Gan

---

[New Products]

---

New Products, September 2005
Check out new and improved SQL Server–related products.
 — Dawn Cyr

---

[SELECT TOP(X)]

---

SQL Server 2000 SP4
It's patching time for SQL Server DBAs everywhere! Michael Otey shares six important updates that SQL Server 2000 Service Pack 4 (SP4) includes.
 — Michael Otey