Savepoints and conditional transactions
This is the second in a short series on transactions. In the previous part I discussed nested transactions and showed...
2015-11-20 (first published: 2015-11-17)
3,293 reads
Gail Shaw
- Interests: Computer Graphics, Aikido, Roleplaying
A Mess of Nested Transactions
Transactions are an area that I often find are used badly, or not used at all. Transactions without any error...
2015-11-03
799 reads
Of clustered indexes and ordering
There is a particularly irritating and persistent belief that indexes (usually it’s the clustered that gets picked on) are always...
2015-10-26 (first published: 2015-10-20)
2,820 reads
Index selectivity and index scans
There was a question raised some time back ‘If an index is not selective, will the query operators that use...
2015-10-14 (first published: 2015-10-06)
4,371 reads
Repairing a replication subscriber
It’s a question which has come up a couple of times. If a subscriber of a transactional replication publication becomes...
2015-09-22
1,128 reads
Unusual errors with Distributed Replay
I’ve come to really like Distributed Replay in the last couple of years. I’ve used it to do a scale...
2015-09-08
1,168 reads
How not to do a Masters degree
There are many, many guides to successfully completing a post grad degree, so I am not going to add to...
2015-08-11
592 reads
Premature Optimisation
Learning how to tune a system is a bit of science and a bit of an art. Gail Shaw gives some guidelines on when you might want to tune and how to go about it so as not to unnecessarily undertake the effort.
2014-09-22
5,897 reads
On the importance of a complete break
If you’re the type who habitually checks work email and thinks about work while on holiday, here’s Gail Shaw's challenge for next time: don’t.
2014-09-01
178 reads
But, but, but, my data is clean!
Gail Shaw on the challenges of trying to extract meaningful data from a database containing customers who have the name 'Dummy **DO NOT USE**''.
2014-06-23
329 reads
Blogs
Why I stopped using MCP for AI coding stuff
By HeyMo0sh
Something has shifted quietly in 2026. The developers I know/respect—the ones actually shipping, not...
AI: Blog a Day – Day 5: Notebooks, Hugging face models and Fine Tuning
By Vinay Thakur
Continuing from Day 4 where we learned Encoder, Decoder, and Attention Mechanism, today we...
AI: Blog a Day – Day 4: Transformers – Encoder, Decoder, and Attention
By Vinay Thakur
Continuing from Day 3 where we covered LLM models open/closed and their parameters, Today...
Forums
Dynamic Unpivot
I have a table I didn't design that has tons of repeating groups in...
Writing as an Art and a Job
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Writing as an Art and...
String Similarity II
Comments posted to this topic are about the item String Similarity II
Question of the Day
String Similarity II
What is the range for the result from the EDIT_DISTANCE_SIMILARITY() function in SQL Server 2025?
See possible answers