Introduction The analysis of blocking in SQL Server can be hard if the SQL Server instance has a high number of active connections. This analysis becomes complicated because busy instances could have more than one blocking connection, meaning that we could have more than just one blocking chain. For every group of blocked connections, we […]
2021-02-04
14,780 reads
Problem Finding the hole for continuous sequences of numbers could be a discouraging task even for advanced programmers. This article presents a new solution based on usage of geometry data type and on a unknown function (if not, maybe less used function) specific designed for geometry objects. Sample: Given the following sequence of [dis]continuous numbers […]
2020-03-30
1,646 reads
2020-03-23
1,542 reads
This article demonstrates how the geometric functions in SQL can be use to solve the Islands and Gaps problem.
2020-03-16
2,556 reads
Problem The usage of a collection of integers in some scenarios is considered to be optimal because of the overhead involved by the creation of another user table used just to store numbers, which is the most common solution. What are collections of integers? They are lists or arrays consisting of integers. The number of […]
2020-02-13
5,998 reads
This article is just a short follow up of previous article on filegroup restoring that describes one issue with join elimination optimization.
2017-08-10
1,010 reads
In this article, we'll explore a less used feature of SQL Server: filegroup restoring, feature that has an interesting consequence because database can become inconsistent without any warning and standard checks don't reveal any issue.
2017-06-27
3,615 reads
By Steve Jones
I had an idea for an animated view of a sales tool, and started...
Next Monday, February 9, 2026, my one-day live online training SQL Server Query Tuning...
By Steve Jones
One of the features we advocates have been advocating for is a better way...
I am creating shared datasets that our executive staff can use for creating reports...
I am creating shared datasets that our executive staff can use for creating reports...
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Delta Lake: The Definitive Guide:...
In SQL Server 2025, what is returned from this code:
DECLARE @message VARCHAR(50) = 'Hello SQL Server 2025!'; DECLARE @encoded VARCHAR(MAX); SET @encoded = BASE64_ENCODE(CAST(@message AS VARBINARY(1000))); SELECT BASE64_DECODE(@encoded)See possible answers