About two decades ago, I introduced the concept of transition constraints to show Data Validation in a database is a lot more complex than seeing if a string parameter really is an integer. In October of 2008, I did an article called Constraint Yourself! on how to use DDL constraints to assure data integrity. One of the topics in that piece was a look at state transition constraints via an auxiliary table.
2025-07-07
When I was perusing my LinkedIn feed the other day, I came across this thread about using SELECT *. In one of the replies, Aaron Cutshall noted that: “Another real performance killer is SELECT DISTINCT especially when combined with UNION. I have a whole list of commonly used hidden performance killers!”
2025-07-04
SQL Server 2025 improved PSPO to handle multiple predicates that might have parameter sensitivity, and that’s great! I love it when Microsoft ships a v1 feature, and then gradually iterates over to make it better. Adaptive Memory Grants were a similar investment that got improved over time, and today they’re fantastic.
2025-07-02
Your choice of how you encode data can be significant. With computers and databases, you have a wide range of options. As a programmer, you will likely be called upon at some time in your career to design and coding scheme for particular application. It would really help if you at least avoided designing a bad one.
2025-06-30
SQL Server has several functions to assist with meta data about the server, databases, indexes, and more. In this tip, we will look at how to get index information for indexes in a database using the INDEXPROPERTY function.
2025-06-27
Starting in SQL Server 2025, a new edition is available for installation: SQL Server Developer Standard Edition. This article dives into this edition, the problems it solves, and why it is a great addition for development teams that use SQL Server!
2025-06-25
There are multiple reasons for no full backup: corrupted backups, taking too much time to restore, etc. In this post, I want to show an alternative for these cases, an ace up one’s sleeve, that you can use to recover data.
2025-06-23
Microsoft does not yet support this edition of Ubuntu, but there are some workarounds to make it work. This should not be used for production usage and this blog is for educational/testing purposes only.
2025-06-20
This article explores how to use Snowflake’s task features to implement parent-child data workflows. We will walk through a real-world scenario in which a healthcare organization manages patient records using a sequence of tasks for data ingestion, transformation, enrichment, and reporting.
2025-06-18
Successful DevOps teams rely on data-driven decision-making to continuously improve software delivery and operational performance. Understanding the right DevOps performance metrics is crucial for identifying bottlenecks, improving efficiency, and maintaining high availability. Metrics provide insight into how well your team deploys software, how quickly issues are resolved, and how stable the production environment remains over time.
2025-06-16
By Chris Yates
There was a time when the Chief Data Officer lived in the shadows of...
By Rayis Imayev
"But I don’t want to go among mad people," Alice remarked."Oh, you can’t help...
By Steve Jones
I saw some good reviews of the small gemma3 model in a few places...
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