A quick note to say that it is definitely possible to use a SQL Server spatial table in MapInfo Professional without an ODBC DSN. There's not much about this on the web, and the normal methods of... read more

Note – this will take a LONG time to run – quite possibly many hours - on a big dataset as it drops and recreates the index using different parameters – sledgehammer approach, but given the... read more

There is a bug within SSMS 2008 where if you connect to a db server using an account that does not have any rights to some of the database you can get an error when trying to expand the database list ... read more

I have been getting this error with a WMS layer based on a SQL Server 2008 view, when using a GetFeatureInfo request: java.lang.RuntimeException: java.io.IOException java.io.IOException null... read more

Occasionally we need to transfer user accounts from existing ASP.NET membership based sites into MojoPortal Note : if the databases are on the same server, or can be linked, then it is possible to ... read more

When a SQL Server is configured to run scheduled full backups followed by a sequence of differential backups, taking an ad hoc backup will affect how backups can be restored, potentially breaking the ... read more

Mike S-G has passed me this useful tool for dropping all connections from a database. This is required before deleting or re-naming databases, for example. This creates a stored procedure in... read more

A SQL Server DBA reported many login failures in his SQL logs. These failures were not apparent to system users. The connection string included the clause <Trusted_Connections=Yes>, this should have been <Trusted_Connection=Yes>. Once the connection string had been corrected the log-in failures stopped.

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I hit a problem where I needed to enable network access to SQL Server 2008 Express R2 which was on a Win7 64bit OS. the solution was previously posted at:... read more

Andy Brewer passed me this, adapted from http://barendgehrels.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/extent-of-sql-server-spatial-table.html This is a useful script, using CTEs (common table expressions) to... read more