Sliding Scale Parallelism: Why Stop At DOP?
Erik Darling wonders why SQL Server doesn't have more granular parallelism options.
2017-08-09
3,671 reads
Articles
Fixing Plan Issues in the Middle of the Night
Do you hate when someone wakes you up in the middle of the night and tells you that some query is slower and you need to investigate it? With SQL Server 2017 you might easily do this, or even let SQL Server do this job for you.
2017-08-08
2,067 reads
How to Automatically Create and Refresh Development and Test Databases
In order to be able to deliver database changes more quickly, there are several tasks that must be automated. It can be a daunting job to ensure that the whole team has the latest database build when there is a proliferation of copies, and the database is big. Phil illustrates a solution by taking a set of Redgate tools to show how they can be used together, via PowerShell, to build a database from object-level source, stock it with data, document it, and then provision any number of test and development servers with the database build, taking care to save any DDL changes to the existing copies of the database.
2017-08-08
5,020 reads
Using Super Keys to Enforce Database Constraints
Example of Using Super Keys to Enforce Database Constraints, instead of procedural code
2017-08-07
2,451 reads
SQL Server Management Studio Recovery, Reporting, Key Combinations and Efficiency Tips
Serget Gigoyan is back with another set of 5 common SSMS tips.
2017-08-07
4,928 reads
Dynamic Pivot, Passing Temp Table Variables to Dynamic SQL
This example demonstrates how to perform a pivot using dynamic headers based on the row values of a table. The article also shows how to pass a temp table variable to a Dynamic SQL call.
2017-08-04 (first published: 2015-10-22)
13,304 reads
Developing Metadata Design Patterns in BIML
You may have already experienced ETL Hell, where you have a large number of similar of SSIS tasks, and a small change, such as an alteration to the network topology, means that they all need to be altered with the correct connection details. Perhaps you should consider creating design patterns for all the standard components of integration tasks in BIML, and generating the SSIS packages from these? Amarendra walks you through the process.
2017-08-04
6,028 reads
2017-08-03
15,941 reads
Ingest data from a web page into SQL Server 2017 using R
Siddharth Mehta shows that R libraries can be used from T-SQL to ingest data from the web into SQL Server.
2017-08-03
5,113 reads
Performance Myths : Oversizing string columns
Aaron Bertrand shows a quick demo that illustrates why you should be very careful about oversizing varchar / nvarchar columns.
2017-08-02
8,420 reads
Blogs
The flight recorder: Replaying what an AI agent did on my SQL Server
By Arun Sirpal
“What exactly did it do on my server?” is the first question a DBA...
Announcements from the Microsoft Fabric Community Conference — Barcelona 2026
By James Serra
Microsoft shared a broad set of Fabric, Power BI, and SQL updates at FabCon...
Au Revoir for now
By Steve Jones
No, I’m not quitting or retiring. Just going on vacation, but I leave tonight...
Forums
Let's Talk Certifications
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The Hidden Security Risks of Role Combination in SSAS Tabular
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Hidden Security Risks of...
The Empty Aggregate
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Empty Aggregate
Question of the Day
The Empty Aggregate
I have this table in a SQL Server 2025 database:
CREATE TABLE [dbo].[CustomerOrder] ( [OrderID] [int] NULL, [CustomerID] [int] NULL, [total] [money] NULL ) ON [PRIMARY] GOWhat is returned from this code? (answers are for the sum and then the count)
SELECT SUM(total) AS sum,
COUNT(total) AS count
FROM dbo.CustomerOrder;
See possible answers