What’s new in SSRS 2016 – Session Contents

The 2016 edition of the Belgian SQL Server Days is over. It was a blast – as usual – and it was...

A quick note comparing ISNULL vs COALESCE

There are hundreds of blogs that compare the T-SQL ISNULL function with the ANSI standard COALESCE function. There are also...

Correlated Datetime Columns

SQL Server is a deep and complex product. There’s always more to learn. For example, I had never heard of...

In-memory tables in 60 seconds

As a SQL Server DBA or developer here is what you should know about memory-optimizedtables (in-memory tables):

Introduced in SQL Server 2014Primary...

In-memory tables in 60 seconds

As a SQL Server DBA or developer here is what you should know about memory-optimized tables (in-memory tables):

Introduced in SQL Server 2014
Primary store is main memory, second copy maintained on...

Microsoft Certifications

Every now and again I would navigate to Microsoft’s certification page and see what / if any changes have taken place...

MS Access – Store a Different Value than Displayed in a Combo Box

It is occasionally usefully to display a different values in an Access combo box than what is actually stored in...

My thoughts on Recertifying your MCSE through Microsoft Virtual Academy

A couple of years back I achieved the Microsoft certification MCSE – Business Intelligence. You can read all about that process in...

Query shortcuts in SQL Server Management Studio

Tired of typing out the same queries day after day? Well query shortcuts in SSMS are for you!
Following on from...

Too many indexes!

Indexes are great. They speed up our queries. In fact, without them relational database systems wouldn’t work.
Different indexes work best...