Filtered Indexes: The Developer’s Secret Weapon in SQL Server
Learn about filtered indexes in SQL Server, how they work, and how they can help improve performance.
2025-11-24
3,628 reads
Chandan Shukla
UNLOGGED Tables in PostgreSQL: When Speed Matters More Than Durability
Learn about unlogged tables and how they work in PostgreSQL.
2025-11-21
4,376 reads
MySQL’s BLACKHOLE Storage Engine: The Odd Feature I Wish SQL Server Shipped With
Learn about a MySQL feature that could be useful in some scenarios for SQL Server.
2025-11-10
4,214 reads
How Implicit Transactions Hurt SQL Server Performance Without You Knowing
Learn about implicit transaction and why you might not want to enable this setting.
2025-10-24
6,238 reads
Unlocking High-Concurrency Inserts in SQL Server with OPTIMIZE_FOR_SEQUENTIAL_KEY
Learn how a setting an improve high concurrency inserts with the OPTIMIZE_FOR_SEQUENTIAL_KEY option.
2025-10-01
5,563 reads
When Page Prefetching Takes a Back Seat – Exploring Trace Flag 652 in SQL Server
Learn how a trace flag affects SQL Server reading from disk and where this might be a useful thing for you to enable.
2025-09-24
2,424 reads
Revisiting SQL Server Window Functions- A Practical Walkthrough
A look at window functions in SQL and how they can be used to query data without the restrictions of a GROUP BY.
2025-09-12
6,689 reads
Advanced SQL Server Page Forensics: Detecting Page Splits and Allocations with DBCC PAGE
Page splits are an often-overlooked performance killer in SQL Server. In this article, we take a forensic look at how serial inserts differ from mid-table inserts, revealing why inserting rows out of order causes hidden page splits, increased IO, and fragmentation. Using a wide-column table, we demonstrate both scenarios and decode their impact with page-level analysis.
2025-09-02 (first published: 2025-08-05)
2,483 reads
Deprecated but Forgotten: Why SQL Server’s Text, NText, and Image Data Types Still Haunt Your Systems
TEXT, NTEXT, and IMAGE columns have been deprecated for nearly two decades, yet they still silently haunt many SQL Server environments. This article explains their hidden limitations with practical demos and shows why migrating to VARCHAR(MAX), NVARCHAR(MAX), and VARBINARY(MAX) is critical for modern performance, maintainability, and future upgrades.
2025-09-02 (first published: 2025-08-06)
2,300 reads
How to safely and surgically restore filegroups
Most DBAs are familiar with full and differential ...
2025-09-02 (first published: 2025-08-01)
893 reads
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Forums
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Database security permissions save script
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Question of the Day
The Large Encoded Value
I want to use the new BASE64_ENCODE() function in SQL Server 2025, but return a string that isn't large type. What is the longest varbinary string I can pass in and still get a varchar(8000) returned?
See possible answers