The Subtle Differences Between COALESCE and ISNULL
See how ISNULL and COALESCE behave in different situations and ensure you know which one to pick when.
2025-04-18
5,190 reads
Articles
The State of the Database Landscape in 2025: Insights and trends
How are you navigating the database landscape? Our latest report sheds light on the current state of database management and offers valuable insights into how organizations can navigate and simplify the growing complexities of the database landscape.
2025-04-18 (first published: 2025-03-10)
Using the Default Trace in SQL Server
I have heard of the default trace in SQL Server. I know it’s on by default, but I don’t know how to use it. What can I do with the default trace?
2025-04-18
Metadata Driven Pipelines (Full Load): The Fabric Modern Data Platform
Learn how you can create a full data load process in Fabric.
2025-04-16
4,185 reads
Securing the DevOps Pipeline Part 1: Tools and Strategies for Safer Deployments
DevOps has transformed software delivery, but with rapid deployments come increased security risks. As a DevOps engineer, I’ve seen firsthand how small security oversights can lead to major vulnerabilities.
2025-04-16
How to Remove Constraints from a SQL Server Table
I need to drop constraints on a number of my SQL Server tables. Most of our constraints are primary key and foreign keys, but there are other constraints too. How can we script it so it will deploy with a pipeline in a repeatable manner?
2025-04-14
Elements of the SQL Server Update Statement
Learn how to use the UPDATE statement, along with a few things to be aware of when changing data.
2025-04-11
1,887 reads
The complexity of using Power BI in US Sovereign Clouds
If you do a search for “sovereign cloud,” you will find that most of the cloud providers have their own Sovereign Cloud if you are interested in the concept for any other cloud services you need to use. In this article, I am going to look specifically at how you extend this support to Power BI, and make a few suggestions for how I think it could work better.
2025-04-11
Killing a SPID and Checking Rollback progress in SQL Server
From time to time, I encounter blocking situations where I end up issuing a SQL KILL command against the blocking SPID. When I run sp_who2, I can see the killed SPID is in a ROLLBACK state. Is there any way I can get an idea of how long the rollback for the SPID will take?
2025-04-09
Create Raw Zone Tables using Generative AI: The Fabric Modern Data Platform
In this first article on the Fabric Modern Data Platform, we look at how to use Generative AI to build tables.
2025-04-07 (first published: 2025-04-02)
3,355 reads
Blogs
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A Last Minute Trip to the EU
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Forums
Implementing Type 4 Slowly Changing Dimensions in SQL Server
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Implementing Type 4 Slowly Changing...
The Disabled Index
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Disabled Index
Server-Level Table sizes
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Server-Level Table sizes
Question of the Day
The Disabled Index
I run this code on SQL Server 2022.
CREATE TABLE Drink
(
drinkid INT NOT NULL
CONSTRAINT DrinkPK PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED,
drinkname VARCHAR(20),
rating NUMERIC(2, 1)
)
GO
INSERT INTO Drink
(
drinkid,
drinkname,
rating
)
VALUES
(1, 'Margarita', 4.5),
(2, 'Mojito', 4.3),
(3, 'Old Fashioned', 4.7),
(4, 'Martini', 4.4),
(5, 'Cosmopolitan', 4.2)
GO
ALTER INDEX drinkpk ON dbo.drink DISABLE
GO
SELECT * FROM dbo.Drink
GO
What is the result? See possible answers