I like the "My Network Places" functionality in Windows XP. The way I use Windows Explorer is to have mapped drives for high-use locations. "My Network Places" becomes a psuedo-"favourites" - linking to, for example, a folder where a third-party extract is dropped, or a shared folder from another department, or a folder used for backups but rarely accessed. With that in mind I thought it would be handy to keep a copy of the UNC paths contained in "Network Places". There's a few tools that will allow you to print folder contents ("Network Places" is stored in the "NetHood" folder...

One annoyance I have with SQL Server 2005's right click "Script As...Create" is that permissions on the object(s) to be scripted are not included by default. You can change this in SSMS by going to Tools, Options and then selecting "Scripting" from the tree. There are lots of options for changing how scripts are generated - see this MSDN entry for the full rundown on scripting options. To add permissions to the "Script As...Create", scroll down to "Object scripting properties", and set "Script permissions" to "True". Done! Now if only I could get a DROP in the script before the create... Tags: sql server,...

We have an upcoming requirement to kick all users out of a database before running a backup. So I'm saving this script for future reference (thanks to Chris for posting it to the SQL Down Under List):CREATE PROC [dbo].[sp_SpidKill] @db VarChar(200) AS DECLARE @Tmp VarChar(10) DECLARE @spid VarChar(10) DECLARE @Kill VarChar(200) SELECT @spid = Min(spid) FROM master.sys.sysprocesses WHERE dbid = DB_ID(@db) WHILE @spid IS NOT NULL BEGIN SET @Kill = 'KILL ' + @spid EXEC(@Kill) SET @Tmp = @spid SET @spid = NULL SELECT @spid = Min(spid) FROM master.sys.sysprocesses WHERE dbid = DB_ID(@db) AND spid > @Tmp END Tags: sql server, database,...

If you use Prototype, there's a very helpful, very new library of extensions at Scripteka.com (thanks to Ajaxian for the link). Using Scripteka, you can browse extensions by tag, or view the latest or most popular extensions, all with links back to authors' sites and demos. The site itself also uses Prototype and has some nice examples of in-place refreshing. If you develop web pages and don't use Prototype, check out Scripteka to see what you're missing out on. It's like adding a slice of cheese to your Vegemite sandwich...making a great thing even greater :-) I like the fact that selecting...

...I'd be using Red Gate's SQL Multi Script. The initial "alpha" version is available now for free. I've given it a whirl and it works exactly as advertised, with further improvements in the pipeline too. At first glance I thought a utility like this would be better off being built into SQL Server Management Studio. After using it (and reading on the forum what other users want it for), I reckon a small, stand-alone product is probably better. I've been advised that this alpha release will stop working at the end of 2007. Tags: sql server, database, script, server