Monica Rathbun

Monica lives in Virginia and is a Microsoft MVP for Data Platform. She has over 15 years of experience working with a wide variety of database platforms with a focus on SQL Server. She is a frequent speaker at IT industry conferences on topics including performance tuning and configuration management. She is the Leader of the Hampton Roads SQL Server User Group and a Mid-Atlantic PASS Regional Mentor. She is passionate about SQL Server and the SQL Server community, doing anything she can to give back. Monica can always be found on Twitter (@sqlespresso) handing out helpful tips.

Blog Post

Comparing Execution Plans

When you run a query twice, and get dramatically different run times, your first step can be to try to identify the differences in execution plans. For many that...

2019-07-05 (first published: )

931 reads

Blog Post

Filtered Index Basics

In this post, we continue with another beginner’s blog of database features that may be unknown to many. Let’s take a look at filtered indexes. Many database administrators are...

2019-06-10 (first published: )

767 reads

Blog Post

DMV’s for the Beginner

I give performance presentations at many different events to all levels of SQL Server professionals. Over time I’ve noticed that some DBAs and developers have never looked at the...

2019-05-29 (first published: )

2,097 reads

Blog Post

What is Implicit Conversion?

Another quick post of simple changes you can make to your code to create more optimal execution plans. This one is on implicit conversions. An implicit conversion is when...

2019-04-29 (first published: )

1,147 reads

Blog Post

What’s a Key Lookup?

One of the easiest things to fix when performance tuning queries are Key Lookups or RID Lookups. The key lookup operator occurs when the query optimizer performs an index...

2019-04-17 (first published: )

726 reads

Blog Post

Women in Tech Talk Tech

March is Women’s History Month, to celebrate the PASS Women in Technology Virtual Group (@PASS_WIT) held a webcast featuring prominent...

2019-04-09 (first published: )

1,036 reads

Blogs

Houston AI-Lytics 2026–Powerpoint Slides

By

Thanks to everyone for attending my session on running a Local LLM. If you...

The Book of Redgate: Do the Right Things

By

I do believe that Redgate has been very customer focused since it’s inception. I’ve...

GenAI vs Dashboards: Not the Same (And Never Will Be)

By

There’s a question I’ve been hearing more and more lately, especially as Copilot, Fabric,...

Read the latest Blogs

Forums

T-SQL in SQL Server 2025: JSON_ARRAYAGG

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item T-SQL in SQL Server 2025:...

Spring Connections and Learning at PASS On Tour

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Spring Connections and Learning at...

Multiple Sequence Values

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Multiple Sequence Values

Visit the forum

Question of the Day

Multiple Sequence Values

How do I easily get the next 12 sequence values from a sequence object?

See possible answers