Additional Articles


External Article

How to use sys.fn_PhysLocFormatter undocumented function

It would be nice if we could use the DBCC PAGE command to see exactly what it is stored at the page level, however, in order to do this we need to find a way to correlate the results returned from a SELECT statement with the physical data location. Is that possible? The answer is: YES. All we need to do is use the sys.fn_physLocFormatter function. In this tip, I will cover how to use this undocumented function.

2010-02-02

2,681 reads

External Article

Managing Data Growth in SQL Server

'Help, my database ate my disk drives!'. Many DBAs spend most of their time dealing with variations of the problem of database processes consuming too much disk space. This happens because of errors such as incorrect configurations for recovery models, data growth for large objects and queries that overtax TempDB resources. Rodney describes, with some feeling, the errors that can lead to this sort of crisis for the working DBA, and their solution.

2010-02-01

3,624 reads

External Article

Celko's SQL Stumper: The Class Scheduling Problem

What can we use in SQL instead of E. F. Codd's T theta operators for best-fit? Joe Celko returns with another puzzle that isn't new, in fact it already features “Swedish”, “Croatian” and “Colombian” solutions in chapter 17 of Joe's 'SQL for Smarties' book. These were all written before CTEs or the new WINDOW functions. Is there now a better solution? Was there one even then? We leave it to the readers to provide the answer!

2010-01-27

1,535 reads

External Article

Performance Analysis Using SQL Server 2008 Activity Monitor Tool

While looking through the new features and improvements in SQL Server 2008 Management Studio (SSMS) we found a potentially interesting one called Activity Monitor. Database developers and Database Administrators can use Activity Monitor to get a quick overview of an SQL Server 2008 system performance. Can you give us a detailed explanation of how we go about using Activity Monitor?

2010-01-26

4,406 reads

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Question of the Day

Upgrading Admin Queries

I have a query from a former DBA that we run on SQL Server 2025 to check on database metadata. This query references sys.sysaltfiles. I want to refactor this code to be more modern. Which DMV should I reference instead?  

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