In SQL Server, heaps are rightly treated with suspicion. Although there are rare cases where they perform well, they are likely to be the cause of poor performance. If a table is likely to have a large number of changes, then it can become fragmented due to way that space is allocated and forward pointers used. How does one detect this problem? Is it significant? How does one deal with it, if necessary? Neeraj Tripathi explains.
2015-11-23
3,694 reads
There may be some people who enjoy repetitive typing, but Grant Fritchey doesn't. He's always preferred SQL Prompt. The standard snippets suit developers fine but aren't so DBA-oriented, so he set about asking the SQLServerCentral community what they typed in the most, and set about producing a set of DBA snippets with the results.
2015-11-20
4,144 reads
Greg Larson walks through the GUI installation process for SQL Server 2016 and explore these new installation options.
2015-11-19
4,175 reads
Join tSQLt developer, Sebastian Meine, and Steve Jones as they answer your questions and show you how to unit test T-SQL code.
2015-11-19 (first published: 2015-11-10)
9,014 reads
A quick SQL Prompt tip to automatically add semicolons to your code.
2015-11-18 (first published: 2015-01-20)
5,824 reads
When an application suffers from performance problems, it’s common to assume the database is at fault. Ben Emmett examines why this often isn’t the case, and shows how you can dig into a .NET application’s use of SQL Server.
2015-11-18
4,405 reads
Join Steve Jones for a Database Lifecycle Management webinar on Nov 17 at 11am EDT. Watch to see how smooth a database development pipeline can be.
2015-11-17 (first published: 2015-11-09)
6,349 reads
There are few parts of SQL Syntax as familiar as the GROUP BY clause of the SELECT statement. On the other hand, CUBE and ROLLUP remain mysterious despite their usefulness and GROUPING SET is positively arcane, especially if you are too shy to reveal your ignorance of the subject by asking! William Brewer saves you the hassle.
2015-11-17
4,187 reads
SQL Server 2016 brings a new feature called Stretch Database, which allows a database to keep transactional data on local instance and warm and cold data on the Azure SQL database platform.
2015-11-16
5,344 reads
Paul White explores some less well-known query optimizer features and limitations, and explains the reasons for extremely poor hash join performance in a specific case.
2015-11-16
3,593 reads
By Steve Jones
on tenderhooks – adj. feeling the primal satisfaction of being needed by someone, which...
By DataOnWheels
I have been active in the data community throughout my career. I have met...
By Vinay Thakur
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hi, in an ssis for each loop over an object variable called MyListVariable, i...
SQL Server is typically viewed as a transactional or analytical database engine. However, it...
On SQL Server 2025, when I run this, what is returned?
SELECT EDIT_DISTANCE_SIMILARITY('SQL Server', 'MySQL') See possible answers