How to Find the Estimation Cost for a Query
Discover how to estimate the cost of a query. Read on to see an example of how to extract the Estimated Cost for execution plans stored in the procedure cache.
2020-06-23
Articles
Take our short readers’ survey and win a $50 Amazon voucher
Could you spare 3 minutes to help us out at SQL Server Central/Simple Talk? Take this short survey, tell us about who you are and why you come to Simple Talk/SQL Server Central, and you could win a $50 Amazon voucher.
2020-06-23
DAX for SQL Folks: Part III - DAX Calculations
Introduction In response to my approach in the pop...
2020-06-22
9,309 reads
Improve Row Count Estimates for Table Variables without Changing Code
Table variables can cause performance issues with joins when they contain a large number of rows. In SQL Server 2019, Microsoft has improved how the optimizer works with table variables which can improve performance without making changes to your code. In this article, Greg Larsen explains how this feature works and if it really does make a difference.
2020-06-22
Testing SQL Server Stored Procedures and Functions with SQL Data Compare
Phil Factor demonstrates a cunning way to test stored procedures or functions, such as after refactoring, by storing the 'before' and 'after' results in views and then using SQL Data Compare to spot any discrepancies.
2020-06-22
Can I Offload DBCC CHECKDB To Another Server?
You want to check for corruption, but you don’t want to slow down your primary production server. In this post, I’m specifically talking about offloading the corruption checking process. I’m not talking about doing corruption checking on both the primary and other servers – that’s wonderful, and if you’re doing that, you should hug yourself. You’re doing a good job. Who’s a good dog? You are! Good dog.
2020-06-19
What is the impact of remote working on estate management?
Distributed workforces have very quickly become the norm. The 2020 State of Database Monitoring survey explores the impact of remote working on estate management and how organisations are responding. You can read the full findings in the free report, here.
2020-06-19
Provisioning Azure SQL Database with Failover groups using Terraform
Get a basic introduction to Terraform by deploying and removing SQL Servers and a failover group to Azure.
2020-06-18
5,769 reads
Hands-On with Columnstore Indexes: Part 1 Architecture
Microsoft introduced Columnstore with SQL Server 2012 and have improved the feature in every version since then. You may be wondering why they are different than traditional indexes and how they work. In this series, Edward Pollack explains the architecture of Columnstore indexes. In future articles in the series, he will describe best practices for Columnstore.
2020-06-18
Unlocking the value of frequent database deployments
Database deployments are on the rise, with more organizations releasing weekly or daily. But this does not always result in more value being delivered. Steve Jones advises the steps you can take to unlock the value of frequent releases in this blog.
2020-06-18
Blogs
Flyway Tips: AI Helps with Commit Messages
By Steve Jones
At Redgate, we’re experimenting with how AI can help developers and DBAs become better...
Startup scripts in SQL Server containers
I was messing around performing investigative work on a pod running SQL Server 2025...
Using SQL Compare with Redgate Data Modeler
By Steve Jones
Redgate recently released SQL Compare v16, which included a new feature to work with...
Forums
Encoding Strings
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Deep Learning and Craftsmanship Matter
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Building a Real-Time Analytics Pipeline with Azure Stream Analytics and SQL Server
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Building a Real-Time Analytics Pipeline...
Question of the Day
Encoding Strings
I have this code in SQL Server 2025. What is the result?
DECLARE @message VARCHAR(50) = 'Hello SQL Server 2025!'; DECLARE @encoded VARCHAR(MAX); SET @encoded = BASE64_ENCODE(@message); SELECT @encoded AS EncodedResult;See possible answers