When a hospital’s mission-critical database fails at Christmas, disaster for the hospital – and its hapless DBA – seems certain. With less than an hour to spare before catastrophe, can the DBA Team save the day? This is a fictionalized true story.
2014-12-23 (first published: 2014-12-04)
17,000 reads
Learn how you can achieve better performance with linked list instead of a numbering column.
2014-12-22
9,151 reads
The term UPSERT has been coined to refer to an operation that inserts rows into a table if they don’t exist, otherwise they are updated. To perform the UPSERT operation Microsoft introduced the MERGE statement. Not only does the MERGE statement support the UPSERT concept, but it also supports deleting records. Greg Larsen discusses how to use the MERGE statement to UPDATE, INSERT and DELETE records from a target table.
2014-12-22
13,060 reads
Who messed around with my database? Auditing 101. In this article we will take a look at another technique available in SQL 2008 and higher. This new technique is SQL Audit.
2014-12-19 (first published: 2012-05-31)
15,158 reads
This tip looks at some of the questions around attribute relationships in SQL Server Analysis Services, including why you need them, how to create them, and the common data sets involved.
2014-12-19
7,646 reads
After having seen many systems that use GUIDs as the primary key for every table, it is time to say enough is enough.
2014-12-18
9,979 reads
Every time you access a relational database to make a query, you have an important decision to make: What is the appropriate isolation level for your query? If you get this wrong, the consequences can be serious. Deadlocks, Dirty reads, Non-repeatable reads, or poor performance. We're in luck, because Robert Sheldon once more answers those questions that are awkward to ask in public.
2014-12-18
12,150 reads
One of the primary advantages of Platform-as-a-Service solutions offered by Microsoft Azure is the ease with which scaling can be implemented. While SQL Database facilitates both vertical and horizontal scaling approaches, scaling it out is considerably more challenging. In this article, we will provide a high-level overview of both vertical and horizontal scaling methods available with Azure SQL Database.
2014-12-17
8,467 reads
Voting is now open for the Tribal Awards. Vote for one of the 5 finalists in each category to win a fabulous* prize.
2014-12-16
1,345 reads
Kathi Kellenberger demonstrates how to start adding visual flair to your SSRS reports, using its impressive set of visual controls, ranging from basic charts to gauges, indicators, sparklines, and maps.
2014-12-16
7,115 reads
By Steve Jones
I don’t have SQL Server installed on my laptop. In an effort to keep...
Slow-running queries can degrade your Redshift cluster’s performance and lead to increased costs. Identifying...
By gbargsley
If you've been here before, you know this blog is usually about SQL Server,...
Hi all Can I get some perspective from the community please on performing in-place...
Comments posted to this topic are about the item How Long is a Long...
Comments posted to this topic are about the item T-SQL Trigonometric Functions in SQL...
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