Q) If you set up a database with 3 files, will SQL Server fill the first file before using the other 2 or will it store data in all 3 files right from the beginning? Is it related to the initial size or the growth setting of the file? What if data is deleted? What … Continue reading SQL Training Q&A – 8 →

Q) I noticed in SQL Server Configuration Manager|Network Config|TCP/IP|Properties|IP Address that the SQL server instance grabbed it's own address from DHCP server. What is the advantage of the SQL server using it's own address? How would one make this static rather than dynamic? This TCP/IP configuration is actually done at the OS level. SQL shows … Continue reading SQL Training Q&A – 7 →

Q) Is there a good reason for having more than just a single (default) instance of SQL Server on a server? Does there have to be a default instance or can you just have named instances?  Can you later change which instance of SQL Server is the default instance and what benefits are there for … Continue reading SQL Training Q&A – 6 →

Q) In connectionstrings I often see server=localhost. Where is this "localhost" name coming from? Is it in a file somewhere?  Is it true that the server must be using TCP/IP for this to work? I also see server=. and server=(local) in connection strings. Do they work the same way and is there a different protocol … Continue reading SQL Training Q&A – 5 →

Q) How do you know if an instance of SQL Server 2005 has been upgraded to  SP1 and what do you do to assure all SQL Server Services are shut down  prior to installing the service pack? I attempted to install SP1 and got  some lock violations and kept shutting down all services I could … Continue reading SQL Training Q&A – 4 →

Q) I specified the SQL Server service to run under LocalSystem, but noticed a domain user account is recommended. Can you talk more about best practices? Does the service run as its own user in its own group? Does it  belong in the Administrators group? I also notice that when I looked at  the configuration … Continue reading SQL Training Q&A – 3 →

Q) When installing SQL Server 2005, do people just accept the collation defaults? Is collation a big decision? This setting will define, for instance, if SQL will consider lowercase different from uppercase or if characters will accents will be considered different from the same characters without accents. The default setting is to be case insensitive … Continue reading SQL Training Q&A – 2 →

Q) For the SQL Server 2005 training, should we use SQL Server Standard or SQL Server Enterprise? There are a few differences between what's available in each version of SQL Server 2005. You can find a nice comparision at: http://www.microsoft.com/sql/prodinfo/features/compare-features.mspx Q) Can we run SQL Server under both Windows XP and Windows Server 2003? The … Continue reading SQL Training Q&A – 1 →