Women in Technology
A guest editorial from Phil Factor today that points out some of the incredibly contributions by women in technology.
2010-01-06
394 reads
Phil Factor
- Interests: Motorbikes, Beer, gardening, conservation, Local history.
Why would a SQL Server Professional need an iPhone for work?
In which Phil Factor attempts to justify his iPhones and iPod Touches as a business expense.
2010-01-04
303 reads
Speed Phreaks
A guest editorial from Phil Factor looks at the Speed Phreak competition that has been taking place recently and is quite popular. Read about the inspiration for the competition and why you might want to participate.
2009-11-18
281 reads
Surely It Should Just Work?
Does a programmer need to know how his code gets executed? Arguably, developers should focus on database structures rather than a particular implementation, and Phil tries to convince us that good programming is not just knowing everything about your programming environment.
2009-11-16
138 reads
Phil Factor SQL Speed Phreak Competition
If you have a database application that is running slowly, or is straining the server, what do you do? After...
2009-10-25
3,144 reads
In Praise of Barebones Applications
The English voice of IT reason, Phil Factor, brings us a guest editorial. Today he waxes about the overbearing processes used to build internal corporate applications.
2009-10-01
190 reads
There's No Such Species as a DBA
Phil ponders whether the term 'DBA' is still really meaningful, or if it's just a blunt instrument used to bash a diverse population into a mis-conceived niche. Is it worth the trouble of being typecast, just to have those 3 letters on your CV?
2009-09-21
258 reads
A Good Word for ODBC
A guest editorial from Phil Factor puts in a good word for ODBC. This is the standard for Windows machines to connect to all kinds of data sources, and is both loved and hated by developers of all kinds.
2009-09-10
318 reads
Evil Code
/*
A couple
of years ago, when I wrote the Simple-Talk Prettifier that is really no more than a stored
procedure...
2009-08-18
2,619 reads
The Joy of Data Modelling.
You may think that the task of teasing out the exact nature
of the data and processes within a company...
2009-08-17
2,916 reads
Blogs
Claude Code Helps Analyze Test Data Manager Log Files
By Steve Jones
I had a customer ask about analyzing their Test Data Manager (TDM) usage to...
PowerPoint to HTML with Claude AI
By Steve Jones
I had an idea for an animated view of a sales tool, and started...
Don’t Miss Out – SQL Server Query Tuning Fundamentals Starts Next Monday!
Next Monday, February 9, 2026, my one-day live online training SQL Server Query Tuning...
Forums
SQL Server 2025 Query Performance Tuning: Troubleshoot and Optimize Query Performance
Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Server 2025 Query Performance...
Is it uncommon for Dev's to have a data model of the source data
This is a generic question. To the moderators, I wasn't sure where to place...
ROLLUP to calculate Month total for all Categories
Good Afternoon, I have built a table with four columns: Period(Month), Category, Numerator, Denominator....
Question of the Day
Creating JSON I
On SQL Server 2025, what happens when I run this code:
SELECT JSON_OBJECTAGG( 'City':'Denver') GOSee possible answers