When do Distribution Statistics Get Updated?
Statistics objects are important to us for allowing SQL to make good estimates of the row-counts involved in different parts...
2017-07-05
767 reads
Matthew McGiffen
- Twitter: @MattMcGiffen
- Website: https://matthewmcgiffen.com/
What’s an “Index” and how do they work?
What is an Index?
We often hear indexes explained using the analogy of an index in the back of a book....
2017-06-12
1,579 reads
SQL Puzzle 1: Magic Squares
This is the first in what I hope will be a semi-regular series of recreational puzzles where SQL can be...
2017-06-07
1,562 reads
Working with Data in Always Encrypted
In this post we’re going to create some encrypted columns in a table in a test database and look at...
2017-06-06
10,451 reads
Tuning Parallelism on SQL Server
Parallelism and MAXDOP
There’s no doubt that parallelism in SQL is a great thing. It enables large queries to share the...
2017-05-26
5,288 reads
SQL Server 2016 SP1 – A significant change to licencing
A lot has been written about the change of licencing in SQL 2016 SP1. Here's my two-pence worth.
2017-05-17
9 reads
Splitting Strings on SQL Server 2016
A small change, but a great one, in SQL 2016 is native support for splitting strings.
This has to be about...
2017-05-09
780 reads
Tuning Parallelism on SQL Server
Thoughts on how to think about parallelism in SQL Server - and how to tune it.
2017-04-18
12 reads
Working with Data in Always Encrypted
In this post we’re going to create some encrypted columns in a table in a test database and look at some of the practicalities and limitations of working with...
2017-04-10
8 reads
Understanding Keys and Certificates with Always Encrypted
This post attempts to explain in simple terms what keys are involved in Always Encrypted, how they get used, and the implications of those facts.
2017-04-03
9 reads
Blogs
Using Prompt AI for a Travel Data Analysis
By Steve Jones
I was looking back at my year and decided to see if SQL Prompt...
FinOps for Kubernetes: Leveraging OpenCost, KubeGreen, and Kubecost for Cost Efficiency
In the era of cloud-native applications, Kubernetes has become the default standard platform for...
2025 Wrapped for Steve
By Steve Jones
I’ve often done some analysis of my year in different ways. Last year I...
Forums
The North Star for the Year
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The North Star for the...
Multiple Escape Characters
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Multiple Escape Characters
reaching ftp thru winscp but erroring in ssis ftp task connection
Hi, below i show various results trying to reach our ftp site (a globalscape...
Question of the Day
Multiple Escape Characters
In SQL Server 2025, I run this code (in a database with the appropriate collation):
SELECT UNISTR('%*3041%*308A%*304C%*3068 and good night', '%*') AS 'A Classic';
What is returned? See possible answers