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Recursive CTEs can be confusing and scary, so examining some non-standard examples may cast light upon these shadowy demons.  Read more...

Checking program code into source control is a daily ritual for most developers, but versioning database code is less well-understood. Grant Fritchey argues that getting your databases under source control is not only vital for the stability of development and deployment, but it will make your life easier when something does go wrong.  Read more...

During a transaction, data is written to the log cache so that it’s ready to be written to the log file on commit, or can be rolled back if necessary. When the log cache is being flushed to disk, the SQL Server session will wait on the WriteLog wait type. If this happens all the time, it may suggest disk bottlenecks where the transaction log is stored.  Read more...

SQL Server 2012 introduced columnstore indexes, which can immensely improve the performance of OLAP queries. How were they updated and improved in SQL Server 2014?  Read more...

Many DBAs back up their user databases, but not their system databases. Whatever the reason for the lack of a backup, John Grover explains how to save yourself (mostly) should you ever find yourself with no viable master database and no good backup.  Read more...

Red Gate’s running a half-day training workshop at their UK head office in Cambridge on Aug 8. It’ll show you how to link your database source control repository to your build system as the starting point for continuous integration.   Read more...

There times when you need to write T-SQL code that creates specific T-SQL Code and executes it. When you do this you are creating dynamic T-SQL code. When writing dynamic T-SQL you need to understand how dynamic code opens the possibilities for a SQL injection attack.  Read more...

Dynamic Management Views (DMVs) are a significant and valuable addition to the DBA's troubleshooting armory, laying bare previously unavailable information regarding the under-the-covers activity of your database sessions and transactions.  Read more...

A lot of numbers that we use everyday such as Bank Card numbers, Identification numbers, and ISBN codes, have check digits. As part of the routine data cleansing of such codes we must check that the code is valid- but do we? Dwain Camps shows how it can be done in SQL in such a way that it could even be used in a constraint, and keep bad data out of the database.  Read more...

This article demonstrates a method of importing a data file directly into a temporary table and selectively inserting data from the temporary table into a SQL Server table, all in a single set of SQL commands.  Read more...

Every now and again I find myself working with SSIS for one reason or another.  Every now and again I...  Read more...

SirSQL made a rather stirring post recently. He talked about a speaker buddy system to help out new speakers in...  Read more...