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: )

1,026 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

12 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: )

2,796 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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Forums

non ascii columns in a utf-8 .txt file

By stan

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

PolyBase Trace Flags

By Leo.Miller

Are there any good articles on all the trace flags that are enabled on...

The Data Model Matters

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item 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