Automating SQL Server Inventory Collection with SQLInventory
Learn about a free inventory tool to help you keep track of basic information on your servers.
2025-07-04
4,925 reads
Articles
Parameterize Connections in Microsoft Fabric Data Factory using Variable Libraries
Building pipelines in Microsoft Fabric can be complicated, and it's easy to write code that is hard to maintain. Using parameters in your connections helps to build pipelines that are easily configured.
2025-07-04 (first published: 2025-06-02)
4,769 reads
DISTINCT and UNION: What happens when you use them together?
When I was perusing my LinkedIn feed the other day, I came across this thread about using SELECT *. In one of the replies, Aaron Cutshall noted that: “Another real performance killer is SELECT DISTINCT especially when combined with UNION. I have a whole list of commonly used hidden performance killers!”
2025-07-04
How SQL Server 2025’s Optional Parameter Plan Optimization Works
SQL Server 2025 improved PSPO to handle multiple predicates that might have parameter sensitivity, and that’s great! I love it when Microsoft ships a v1 feature, and then gradually iterates over to make it better. Adaptive Memory Grants were a similar investment that got improved over time, and today they’re fantastic.
2025-07-02
How to Work with RStudio and SQL Server
Learn how to get started running R scripts in R/Studio for data analysis.
2025-06-30
1,941 reads
Data Encoding Schemes
Your choice of how you encode data can be significant. With computers and databases, you have a wide range of options. As a programmer, you will likely be called upon at some time in your career to design and coding scheme for particular application. It would really help if you at least avoided designing a bad one.
2025-06-30
Why Clone Fails: Discovering the Hardware Beneath Azure SQL MI
In this next part of the series on Managed Instance, we see how to discover a bit about the internals of how the instance is being run. Learn how to kill and respawn a Managed Instance.
2025-06-27
1,102 reads
Retrieving SQL Server Index Properties with INDEXPROPERTY
SQL Server has several functions to assist with meta data about the server, databases, indexes, and more. In this tip, we will look at how to get index information for indexes in a database using the INDEXPROPERTY function.
2025-06-27
SQL Server Developer Standard Edition: A Gift to Developers!
Starting in SQL Server 2025, a new edition is available for installation: SQL Server Developer Standard Edition. This article dives into this edition, the problems it solves, and why it is a great addition for development teams that use SQL Server!
2025-06-25
The Hidden Cost of MAXDOP: CPU Spikes, Query Slowdowns, and What We Learned
Misusing MAXDOP can silently kill performance across your SQL Server. In this deep dive, we uncover how one bad query caused CPU meltdown, run real-world tests, and show how tuning—not parallelism—often holds the true fix.
2025-06-23
4,284 reads
Blogs
Flyway Tips: AI Deployment Script Descriptions
By Steve Jones
With the AI push being everywhere, Redgate is no exception. We’ve been getting requests,...
A New Word: Fawtle
By Steve Jones
fawtle – n. a weird little flaw built into your partner that somehow only...
Post-quantum key exchange – Insurance policy for your packets
AWS recently added support for Post-Quantum Key Exchange for TLS in Application Load Balancer...
Forums
High Availability setup - has anyone seen this method?
Hi all, I recently moved to a new employer who have their HA setup...
Semantic Search in SQL Server 2025
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Semantic Search in SQL Server...
Encoding URLs
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Encoding URLs
Question of the Day
Encoding URLs
I have this data in a table:
CREATE TABLE Response ( ResponseID INT NOT NULL CONSTRAINT ResponsePK PRIMARY KEY , ResponseVal VARBINARY(5000) ) GOIf I want to get a value from this table that I can add to a URL in a browser, which of these code items produces a result I can use? See possible answers