Duplicate & Overlapping Indexes can be a drag on write speed and disk resources. How do we find and eliminate them quickly and effectively?
2016-07-08 (first published: 2014-06-16)
45,514 reads
What are natively compiled stored procedures? Why would we want to use them and what are the performance benefits of using them over classic disk-based stored procedures?
2016-05-20 (first published: 2014-08-04)
24,827 reads
Have you ever wanted to run a query across every database on a server with the convenience of a stored procedure? If so, Microsoft provided a stored procedure to do so. It’s unreliable, outdated, and somewhat obfuscated, though. Let’s improve on it!
2016-04-15 (first published: 2014-12-01)
16,939 reads
It sounds simple enough. Either your column will always have a value or it may not. Yet somehow such a seemingly simple decision can become a never-ending debate where database schema begins to resemble superstition and designing effective tables seems more contentious than you expected it to be.
2016-02-26 (first published: 2014-10-30)
27,222 reads
Cursors are considered by many to be the bane of good T-SQL. What are the best ways to avoid iterative T-SQL and to write queries that look and perform beautifully? This first part in an ongoing series of cursor-killing handles inter-row analysis.
2015-12-18 (first published: 2014-05-27)
22,678 reads
CONNECT ANY DATABASE is one of three new permissions in SQL Server 2014 that can be granted to server logins. What is this new permission good for and why would we ever want this?
2014-07-29
14,984 reads
SQL Server 2012 introduced columnstore indexes, which can immensely improve the performance of OLAP queries. How were they updated and improved in SQL Server 2014?
2014-07-24
8,379 reads
SQL Server 2014 has a number of new DMVs, and some changes from SQL Server 2012. What are the new views and changes, and how can be useful to you?
2014-07-08
4,668 reads
There were many new DMVs added in SQL Server 2012, and some that have changed since SQL Server 2008 R2. This is a brief overview of the biggest changes and what they mean to you!
2014-07-03
6,107 reads
Statistics keep track of our data and will tell SQL Server how to make the best optimization decisions. Knowing how they work can make understanding query and performance problems much easier!
2014-06-09
5,628 reads
By Brian Kelley
Following the advice in Smart Brevity improves communication.
By John
Microsoft has released SQL Server 2025, bringing big improvements to its main database engine....
By Steve Jones
A customer was asking about what certain items in Redgate Monitor mean. They have...
I have table: t1 in schema1 with 19 billion records. I have another table...
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Minimally Viable Security
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Encoding NULL
What is returned from this code in SQL Server 2025?
SELECT BASE64_ENCODE(NULL)See possible answers