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

The FAST number_rows Query Hint

Query hints are always about tradeoffs—typically you are giving up something, such as flexibility, to achieve more consistency, or very specific performance characteristic. One example of this migt when...

2019-10-29 (first published: )

1,013 reads

Blog Post

New Event Calendar

Speaking Engagements Check out my new Event Calendar, to see my upcoming and past speaking engagements. You can catch me at various events throughout the year. If you are...

2019-10-15

11 reads

Blog Post

Quick SSMS Tip

It is widely known that I am a horrible speller and hate to type code. I tend to use a lot of code snippets and reuse code to avoid...

2019-09-20 (first published: )

1,261 reads

Blog Post

Are My SQL Server Indexes Being Used?

Indexes can be incredibly beneficial to your database performance; however, they do come with a cost—indexes both consume storage space and affect insert performance. Therefore, it is important as...

2019-09-11 (first published: )

2,791 reads

Blogs

Shifting Mindsets: Why FinOps is Essential for Cloud Efficiency

By

As a DevOps practitioner, I’ve always focused on performance, scalability, and automation. But as...

March 2026 SQL Server Security Updates

By

On Patch Tuesday, in addition to OS and Office security patches, Microsoft also released...

How Fabric Mirroring Transformed with SQL Server 2025

By

When mirroring was first released for Azure SQL Database, it used Change Data Capture...

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Forums

XACT_ABORT being set to ON by web services

By zoggling

We have two "identical" instances of an ASP.NET web service (or so I have...

OPENQUERY Flexibility

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item OPENQUERY Flexibility

A Full Shutdown

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item A Full Shutdown

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Question of the Day

OPENQUERY Flexibility

Which of these are valid OPENQUERY() uses?

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