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: )

932 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: )

2,100 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: )

1,149 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: )

1,037 reads

Blogs

From SQL Saturday to Day of Data

By

A behind-the-scenes look at Day of Data Jacksonville 2026, the transition from SQL Saturday,...

PostgreSQL 18 Finally Makes BUFFERS the Default. Here Is Why That Matters

By

You run EXPLAIN ANALYZE on a slow query, stare at the plan, and something...

A New Word: La Guadière

By

la guadière – n. a glint of goodness you notice in something that you...

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non ascii columns in a utf-8 .txt file

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hi, we couldnt get our upstream data source developers to supply what is sometimes...

PolyBase Trace Flags

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The Data Model Matters

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Question of the Day

Running SQLCMD I

I run the SQLCMD utility as follows:

lcmd -S localhost -E
I then type this (the 1> is the prompt):
1> select @@version go
If I hit enter, what happens?

See possible answers