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
5,456 reads
Chandan Shukla
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
4,924 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
2,346 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
6,369 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)
2,392 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)
2,017 reads
How to safely and surgically restore filegroups
Most DBAs are familiar with full and differential ...
2025-09-02 (first published: 2025-08-01)
800 reads
What is Delayed Durability in SQL Server — And Should You Turn It On?
Learn about delayed durability in SQL Server and how it might help you with a heavily loaded server.
2025-08-29
8,192 reads
From Rows to Pages: The Hidden Chaos Behind SQL Server’s Sampling Methods
Learn about the TABLESAMPLE option in T-SQL and uncover some of the pitfalls of assuming this works as you think it does.
2025-08-22
2,089 reads
How a Legacy Logic Choked SQL Server in a 30-Year-Old Factory
When a SQL Server Express-based factory app started crawling, the culprit wasn’t hardware or network — it was a decades-old WHILE loop migrated from C/C++ to SQL. This real-world story breaks down how procedural habits, memory grants, and lack of window functions nearly derailed a production floor.
2025-07-28
14,278 reads
Blogs
Measuring What Matters: Operationalizing Data Trust for CDOs
By Chris Yates
Trust is the currency of the data economy. Without it, even the most advanced...
A Small LLM Fail
By Steve Jones
Another test with Copilot in SSMS (v22 P3) that didn’t go so well. This...
SQL Server Versions: Out With the Old, In With the Supported
By Kevin3NF
If your production SQL Servers are still running 2016 (or older) you’re basically banking...
Forums
Create an HTML Report on the Status of SQL Server Agent Jobs
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Create an HTML Report on...
SSIS packages failing with a status "ended unexpectedly" (SSL/TLS timeout ?)
We have an issue where SSIS packages are failing with a status of "ended...
SQL Newbie HELP: The query references an object that is not supported in distr..
Hi everyone! I'm new to SQL and am trying to query a view (dbo.)...
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Slip Streaming Installs
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