SQL Explained
A short explanation and infographic of what SQL is. For the non-SQL people in your life.
2015-07-24
8,743 reads
Articles
SQL Style Habits: Attack of the Skeuomorphs
Although we like to think that our programming techniques are progressive and in tune with the bleeding edge of software development practices, too often they are directly influenced by restrictions faced when computers first became mainstream in the post-war decades. In this article Joe Celko looks at the history of mainframes, FORTRAN I and COBOL.
2015-07-24
5,006 reads
Is It Worth Writing Unit Tests?
What's the overhead for writing unit tests? Ed Elliot breaks it down, looking at the ways in which unit tests both take more time and save time.
2015-07-23
8,679 reads
Free webinar: Embracing DLM – The Definitive Guide
Database Lifecycle Management (DLM) is about enabling rapid, risk-free database development and deployments. However, the most effective DLM processes actually reach beyond the database. Embracing the full scope of it can be daunting, so Grant Fritchey and Matthew Skelton are making it manageable.
2015-07-23 (first published: 2015-07-20)
4,591 reads
Large SQL Server Database Backup on an Azure VM and Archiving
For a large SQL Server database on an Azure VM, backing up the data can have some challenges. In this article, Murshed Zaman focuses on the two most common challenges: size and speed.
2015-07-23
5,556 reads
2015-07-22
489 reads
Azure Event Hubs
If you need to receive and process a large volume of of packets of data, such as telemetry, or event-log items, it may be worth considering Azure Event hubs. They aren't like traditional messaging but represent more of a stripped down one-way event processing system for large volumes of data. It could represent a good solution to an ever-present problem, but is it ready for production use? Rob Sheldon investigates.
2015-07-22
3,382 reads
Reporting Services: Drawing a Buffer on a Map
Handle together SQL Server spatial data features and Reporting Service design tools to build a map-based interactive report.
2015-07-21
5,108 reads
Analyzing I/O Performance for SQL Server
Inadequate storage is one of the most common bottlenecks seen in subsystem performance. There are a number of reasons for poor storage performance, but measuring it and understanding what needs to be measured and monitored is always a useful exercise.
2015-07-21
5,049 reads
SQL Monitor Custom Metric: Table size (MB)
This metric is useful if you want to know exactly how much physical space a particular table is taking up, including the size of its indexes.
2015-07-21
2,899 reads
Blogs
How to Find Expensive Queries in Amazon Redshift
Slow-running queries can degrade your Redshift cluster’s performance and lead to increased costs. Identifying...
The Notification Trap: How Input Fatigue Is Killing Deep Work in Tech
By gbargsley
If you've been here before, you know this blog is usually about SQL Server,...
Designing a Storage Load Test for SQL Server
I’ve been doing storage load tests for SQL Server for a long time, both...
Forums
How Long is a Long I/O?
Comments posted to this topic are about the item How Long is a Long...
T-SQL Trigonometric Functions in SQL Server
Comments posted to this topic are about the item T-SQL Trigonometric Functions in SQL...
Half of All Engineers
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Half of All Engineers
Question of the Day
How Long is a Long I/O?
In SQL Server 2025, a long I/O is recorded in the error log with message 833. How long much an I/O request be outstanding before this message is written to the log?
See possible answers