Additional Articles


External Article

Tune Your Indexing Strategy with SQL Server DMVs

SQL Server Indexes need to be effective. It is wrong to have too few or too many. The ones you create must ensure that the workload reads the data quickly with a minimum of I/O. As well as a sound knowledge of the way that relational databases work, it helps to be familiar with the Dynamic Management Objects that are there to assist with your indexing strategy.

2012-10-23

4,324 reads

External Article

Exploring Semantic Search Key Term Relevance

SQL Server's 'Semantic Search' feature seemed an exciting feature when first shown. Was it really true that Microsoft had come up with a system to rival the industry-leaders, one that could extract the contextual meaning of terms in text, or automatically categorise the subject matter of text? On first inspection, it seems unlikely.

2012-10-18

2,985 reads

External Article

Check SQL Server Virtual Log Files Using PowerShell

In a previous tip on Monitor Your SQL Server Virtual Log Files with Policy Based Management, we have seen how we can use Policy Based Management to monitor the number of virtual log files (VLFs) in our SQL Server databases. However, even with that most of the solutions I see online involve the creation of temporary tables and/or a combination of using cursors to get the total number of VLFs in a transaction log file. Is there a much easier solution?

2012-10-11

3,321 reads

Technical Article

Improve Your Database Unit Testing Skills and Win Free Stuff

As the SQL Developer community grows to embrace the benefits of test-driven development for databases, so the importance of learning to do it properly increases. One way of learning effective TDD is by the use of code kata – short practice sessions that encourage test-first development in baby steps. I have a limited number of licences for SQL Test to give away free – just for practicing a bit of TDD and telling me about it.

2012-10-10 (first published: )

5,923 reads

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Learning From Breakage

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

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Python in Action to Auto-Generate an Optimized PostgreSQL Index Strategy

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Adding and Dropping Columns I

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Adding and Dropping Columns I

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Question of the Day

Adding and Dropping Columns I

I have this table in my SQL Server 2022 database:

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[CityList]
(
[CityNameID] [int] NOT NULL IDENTITY(1, 1),
[CityName] [varchar] (30) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS NULL
) ON [PRIMARY]
GO
I decide to add two new columns for the StateProvince and Country. What code should I use?

See possible answers