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SQL Server JOIN Hints

You, as a SQL Server data professional, are looking for ways to improve your queries. You've done the usual - avoided cursors and loops, used locks effectively, examined execution plans - what else can you tweak? Check out this tip to learn more.

2013-04-08

6,542 reads

External Article

New Custom Metric: Long Running Job

SQL Monitor’s Job duration unusual alert is a powerful tool for keeping track of most jobs in your SQL Server environment. It works by comparing the running time of any job instance against the median for that job, and identifying when a variation in the job duration could hint at a performance problem. However, if your environment contains big jobs whose durations vary by several orders of magnitudes, it can be tricky to specify what kind of variation is expected and what would be unusual. For these cases, it is possible to go beyond the functionality of the built-in alert with a custom metric.

2013-04-05

2,857 reads

External Article

SQL Server 2012 Window Function Basics

For some time, Microsoft had a few window functions, but not the full set specified in the SQL 2003 standard. Now, in SQL Server 2012 we have the whole range, and extremely useful they are too. There's no longer an excuse to avoid them, particularly now you have Rob Sheldon's gentle introduction.

2013-04-04

5,033 reads

External Article

Join Reordering and Bushy Plans

Normally, the query Optimiser won't consider 'bushy' plans, where both operands to a join operator could be intermediate results from other joins. This means that it won't produce good query plans for some types of query. Hints, by themselves won't do it. More powerful magic is required.

2013-04-03

3,486 reads

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Question of the Day

Lots of FKs

In SQL Server 2025, what are the most outgoing and incoming FK references a table can have?

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