A document search on a billion row "EAV" table is predicted to take 134 days. With a few design tweaks and an efficient relational division algorithm, Peter Larsson got it down to milliseconds.  Read more...

SQL Server 2012 introduces a new feature to issues backups on the Windows Azure Blob Storage service directly and restore from there when needed. But how does it work and how to get started using T-SQL commands for backup and restore operation?   Read more...

SQLServerCentral and Simple-Talk are co-hosting the Tribal Awards. Nominations open today for each of the 11 categories which recognize technical excellence, willingness to help the wider community, and exceptional SQL Karaoke skills.  Read more...

How to Move Large Table to Different File Group  Read more...

A critical part of any DBA's role is implementing the systems that will improve in the long term their organization's guardianship, use and understanding of its data. Too often, however, this gets lost in the fog of immediate and urgent tasks. Gareth Marlow explains why he believes Cloud services will play an increasingly prominent role in helping DBAs achieve their strategic goals.   Read more...

Today we have a guest editorial from Jim Youmans that asks "what does it mean to be a DBA today?"  Read more...

Auditing is a weak point in SQL Server according to Steve Jones. He looks at a few of its flaws.  Read more...

After a plagiarized article this week, a content for you.  Read more...

A look at Partitioned Views, their advantages, disadvantages backed up by examples and statistics.  Read more...

Mike Eastland frequently restores production databases to various development servers. The drive layouts between the servers are almost never the same. He is constantly shuffling files on his development servers due to space constraints, which in turn breaks the automated restore scripts because the MOVE clauses are invalidated. Does he have to use the MOVE clause every time he does a restore?  Read more...

Business Intelligence architect, Analysis Services Maestro, and author Bill Pearson exposes the DAX ISBLANK() function, and then provides some hands-on exposure to its use, particularly in combination with other DAX functions, in managing empty values underlying our PowerPivot model designs.  Read more...

Would you rather work with people, or compete with them? Steve Jones has comments on the Microsoft Stack Ranking system that seems to encourage the latter.  Read more...

Resilient T-SQL code is code that is designed to last, and to be safely reused by others. The goal of defensive database programming, the goal of this book, is to help you to produce resilient T-SQL code that robustly and gracefully handles cases of unintended use, and is resilient to common changes to the database environment.  Read more...

Power Query, provided as part of Microsoft Power BI self-service solution, is an Excel add-in that can be used for data discovery, reshaping the data and combining data coming from different sources. Power Query is one of Excel add-ins. Read on to learn how to install and get started using it.  Read more...

Using Log Shipping? Looking for a more automated way to fail over during a disaster? Read on...  Read more...

Alex Kuznetsov describes the agile principles, techniques and tools that allowed his development team to make frequent database refactoring a reality, without disrupting users. He explains how this allowed his team to apply an iterative, evolutionary approach to the design and development of their databases, as well as applications.   Read more...

Use this script in SQL Monitor to determine the general load on the operating system you can get a count of the processes that are in a runnable state. This value will go up and down as various systems run on the operating system. It’s only a measure of load on the system and won’t indicate the cause of problems, but will show you pressure on the system.   Read more...

Today Steve Jones talks about the challenges of preserving data across long periods of time, decades perhaps.  Read more...

An RDBMS is a good fit for many database problems, perhaps as Steve Jones thinks, the best fit for most. However NoSQL systems have a place, we're just not sure where.  Read more...

Window functions are more intuitive and simpler in many cases than alternative SQL methods.  Read more...