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: )

1,016 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: )

1,262 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: )

2,795 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,...

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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

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Question of the Day

Multiple Sequence Values

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

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