What I Love About My Job
In June this year I took redundancy from the company I’d worked at for the previous 11 years. It was of course an uncertain time while I figured out...
2023-12-25 (first published: 2023-12-07)
212 reads
Matthew McGiffen
- Twitter: @MattMcGiffen
- Website: https://matthewmcgiffen.com/
T-SQL Tuesday 167 – Encryption and Data Protection Roundup
Huge thanks to everyone who responded to my invitation to blog on Encryption and Data Protection for this month’s T-SQL Tuesday. I got what I hoped for, which was...
2023-10-30 (first published: 2023-10-17)
328 reads
T-SQL Tuesday: Encryption and Data Protection
I have the honour of hosting this month’s T-SQL Tuesday. In case there’s any doubt that’s for October 2023, I’m posting this invitation a little early as I got...
2023-09-29
35 reads
Manually updating Statistics in SQL Server
Having up to date statistics is vital for getting the best performance out of your queries. Even though SQL Server automatically updates statistics in the background for you, you...
2023-09-06
34 reads
Statistics and the Ascending Key Problem
I’ve mentioned previously how not having up to date statistics can cause problems in query performance. This post looks at something called the Ascending Key Problem which can badly...
2023-07-21
127 reads
What Happens in the Background when Executing Queries with Always Encrypted
In previous posts we've looked at a number of aspects of Always Encrypted and how it works. I think it's very useful to understand how it actually works in...
2023-07-03 (first published: 2023-06-15)
245 reads
When do Statistics get updated?
Statistics objects are important for allowing the SQL Server Optimizer to make good estimates and form efficient execution plans. Related to that it's useful for us to understand when...
2023-06-28
157 reads
Parameter Sensitive Plan Optimization in SQL Server 2022. What is it and is it any good?
Parameter Sensitive Plan (PSP) optimization is a new feature in SQL Server 2022 that aims to improve the performance of parameterized queries. It is part of the Intelligent Query...
2023-06-26 (first published: 2023-06-08)
332 reads
What are Statistics in SQL Server?
Statistics are vitally important in allowing SQL Server to find the most efficient way to execute your queries. In this post we learn more about them, what they are...
2023-06-21
314 reads
What is Always Encrypted and how does it work?
Always Encrypted was a new encryption feature added to SQL Server with the 2016 version of the product. Initially it was just available in enterprise edition, but from SQL...
2023-06-21 (first published: 2023-06-05)
371 reads
Blogs
Microsoft MVP 2026: Ten Years on the Data Platform
I’m honored to announce that I’ve been renewed as a Microsoft MVP for the...
Building AgentDBA’s Slack Escalation
By Arun Sirpal
Until now, a CRITICAL finding did the right internal routing, but the last mile...
Changing the Owner Removes Permissions: #SQLNewBlogger
By Steve Jones
This is actually inspired by an article SQL Server Central, which taught me something...
Forums
Developer edition cannot connect from other computers
I installed a new SQL server 2025 Enterprise developer edition for our development environment....
How Clustering can be Used as a Preprocessing Technique for Classification in Azure Machine Learning
Comments posted to this topic are about the item How Clustering can be Used...
Moving the Error Log
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Moving the Error Log
Question of the Day
Moving the Error Log
How can I change the location in which the SQL Server error log is written in SQL Server 2025?
See possible answers