Additional Articles


Technical Article

Using the MERGE Statement to Perform an UPSERT

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.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

(1)

You rated this post out of 5. Change rating

2014-12-22

13,060 reads

External Article

Questions About T-SQL Transaction Isolation Levels You Were Too Shy to Ask

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

Technical Article

Introduction to Azure SQL Database Scalability

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.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

You rated this post out of 5. Change rating

2014-12-17

8,467 reads

External Article

Cloud Identities versus Federated Identities in Office 365

Identities, the 'accounts' by which Cloud and Web users identify themselves, are tricky to manage, and tiresome for the users. Cloud services such as Office 365 have their main use in large organisations and so there have to be easy ways for system administrators to maintain them. Microsoft provide three alternative strategies; Cloud identities, Synced identities and federated identities. What is the differences between them, and which should you choose?

2014-12-11

8,211 reads

Technical Article

Lead and Lag Functions in SQL Server 2012

Arshad Ali discusses how to use CTE and the ranking function to access or query data from previous or subsequent rows. He also shows you how to leverage the LEAD and LAG analytics functions to achieve the same result without writing a self-join query using CTE and ranking function

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

You rated this post out of 5. Change rating

2014-12-10

8,382 reads

Blogs

T-SQL Tuesday #204 – Are blogs still relevant?

By

Note: This post is the invitation for T-SQL Tuesday #204 on November 3rd, 2026....

A Front Door for the DBA Team – AgentDBA UI

By

AgentDBA began as a command line. That suits one DBA on one server, but...

Cleaning Up Azure MS Defender Billing

By

I have a few Azure subscriptions, which are fairly small and not used that...

Read the latest Blogs

Forums

SQL Server Vector Support II

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Server Vector Support II

Great Things

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Great Things

Troubleshooting Slow Queries That Already Have an Index

By Imran2629

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Troubleshooting Slow Queries That Already...

Visit the forum

Question of the Day

SQL Server Vector Support II

With regard to SQL Server 2025's Vector support, what is an embedding?

See possible answers