You have been asked to deploy a brand new SQL Server instance. Your management asks you to come up with the best balance of availability, performance and cost for SQL Server. Richard Vantrease has some recommendations.
2014-06-05
4,676 reads
SQL Server User-Defined Functions are good to use in most circumstances, but there just a few questions that rarely get asked on the forums. It's a shame, because the answers to them tend to clear up some ingrained misconceptions about functions that can lead to problems, particularly with locking and performance
2014-06-04
7,408 reads
In a SSIS data flow, there are multiple types of transformations. On one hand you have synchronous and asynchronous transformations, but on the other hand you have non-blocking, semi-blocking and fully-blocking components. In this tip, Koen Verbeeck takes a closer look on the performance impact of semi-blocking transformations in SSIS.
2014-06-03
2,743 reads
The way to learn PowerShell is to browse and nibble, rather than to sit down to a formal five-course meal. In his continuing series on PowerShell one-liners, Michael Sorens provides Fast Food for busy professionals who want results quickly and aren't too faddy. Part 3 has as its tasty confections - Collections, Hashtables, arrays and strings.
2014-06-02
4,798 reads
Microsoft Azure Queues are a ready-to-use service that loosely connects components or applications through the cloud. This article is the first part in a five-part series about Microsoft Azure Cloud Services by Roman Schacherl.
2014-05-30
2,469 reads
After experiencing 'merge misery' personally, Konrad Lukasik came up with 10 well-tested ways of making branches and merges a stress-free part of application development.
2014-05-29
7,273 reads
There are several ways to implement encryption in SQL Server; Arshad Ali focuses on Transparent Data Encryption (TDE), which was introduced in SQL Server 2008 and is available in later releases.
2014-05-28
3,280 reads
As a DBA, it is vital to manage transaction log growth explicitly, rather than let SQL Server auto-growth events "manage" it for you. If you undersize the log, and then let SQL Server auto-grow it in small increments, you'll end up with a very fragmented log. This article demonstrates how this can have a significant impact on the performance of any SQL Server operations that need to read the log.
2014-05-27
3,916 reads
Many big data application implementations seem to begin with an existing data warehouse, one or more new high-volume data streams, and some specialized hardware and software. The data storage issue is often accommodated by installing a proprietary hardware appliance that can store huge amounts of data while providing extremely fast data access. In these cases, do we really need to worry about database design?
2014-05-26
5,297 reads
Steve and the rest of the DBA Team are back for round two. In this episode they have to restore all of a business' data using nothing but a set of off-site backups, kanban, and witty repartee.
2014-05-26
3,080 reads
By Steve Jones
This was Redgate in 2010, spread across the globe. First the EU/US Here’s Asia...
By John
Today is Christmas and while I do not expect anybody to actual be reading...
By Bert Wagner
Until recently, my family's 90,000+ photos have been hidden away in the depths of...
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Happy Holidays, Let's Do Nerdy...
Comments posted to this topic are about the item UNISTR Escape
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Celebrating Tomorrow
In SQL Server 2025, I run this command:
SELECT UNISTR('*3041*308A*304C\3068 and good night', '*') as "A Classic";
What is returned? (assume the database has an appropriate collation)
A: 
B: 
C: 
See possible answers