The Ebb and Flow of AI
Everybody’s coasting and looking back. Let’s kick our heels up, get comfortable, and talk big picture industry stuff.
2025-01-17
Additional Articles
Five changes to SQL Server I’d love to see
I’ve had lots of wish lists over the years, from Ladybug to Connect to UserVoice, and very few of my dreams ever come true. Still, it’s fun every once in a while, to be whimsical about the way I wished SQL Server worked. Especially in January because, you know, new beginnings.
2025-01-15
Partitioning Data in Microsoft Fabric to Improve Performance for Lakehouses, Warehouses, and Pipelines
Learn how to implement data partitioning within Microsoft Fabric to improve performance for Lakehouses, Warehouses, and Pipelines.
2025-01-13
Comparing Groups for Similarities in Power Query – Using Cosine Similarity
Recently, my skills were put to the test when I needed to compare hundreds of Active Directory and SharePoint Groups to find similarities in their memberships.
2025-01-10
SQL Server OPTION RECOMPILE for Simple Queries
Learn about SQL Server OPTION RECOMPILE and if used on simple, frequently executed queries if it causes excessive CPU usage.
2025-01-08
Data Documents and Common Sense
What can be so difficult in creating a sensible standard for Structured Data Documents? To understand why they tend to get improved into unusable complexity, I’ll need to explain a bit of background.
2025-01-06
Improved RCSI Ghost Cleanup in SQL Server 2022
An example of poor update performance under RCSI as compared with locking read committed. Details of an improvement in SQL Server 2022 that can help avoid the worst effects.
2025-01-03
The Data Center that Exploded
A while back, in a Simple-Talk editorial meeting, someone bet Phil Factor that he couldn't come up with a Halloween story. To our surprise he said he could, as long as he didn't have to keep to the strict literal truth. In the end, he came up with a story about a story, and it is true that he first told the story in a data Centre at Halloween!
2025-01-01 (first published: 2014-10-31)
10,375 reads
GUID in SQL Server
This tip's objective is to present and describe several T-SQL examples for creating, using, and analyzing GUIDs and assessing their uniqueness.
2024-12-30
SQL Server Forced Plans Overwite the Query Hash
A 16-year old SQL Server bug that means 'forced plans' have the query plan hash in place of the expected query hash. Includes an explanation and discussion of the term 'morally equivalent plan'.
2024-12-27
Blogs
Resetting on the AI hype train
By Brian Kelley
There's a great article from MIT Technology Review about resetting on the hype of...
A New Word: Etherness
By Steve Jones
etherness – n. the wistful feeling of looking around a gathering of loved ones,...
Vibe Coding a Login Tracking System
By Steve Jones
A customer was asking about tracking logins and logouts in Redgate Monitor. We don’t...
Forums
The Microsoft SQL Year in Review
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T-SQL in SQL Server 2025: The || Operator
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Your Value from a Conference
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Question of the Day
UNISTR Basics
What does this code return in SQL Server 2025+? (assume the database has an appropriate collation)
SELECT UNISTR('Hello 4E16754C') AS 'A Classic';
A: 
B: 
See possible answers