DBA 101: Altering a column
People always ask me what tools I use. Mostly this question comes from the topic of monitoring. I can honestly...
2017-02-06 (first published: 2017-02-02)
2,221 reads
Confessions of a Microsoft Addict
Query tuning 101: Non-trusted Foreign Keys
Foreign keys are an interesting feature of relational databases. They help enforce data integrity, sometimes help improve performance by eliminating...
2017-01-05 (first published: 2016-12-30)
3,541 reads
Off topic: The two cycle engine and your career path
I’ve been in technology for twenty years now. I’ve seen hundreds of environments, nearly 300 while employed at Microsoft alone.
One...
2016-12-30
777 reads
Using Memory Optimized tables for reporting
I recently worked on a project for fraud. This project needed to relate 67 million accounts to one another “Kevin...
2016-12-27
1,302 reads
Nintendo NES Classic Edition giveaway! #SQLFamily
I’ve managed to get my hands on a Nintendo NES Classic and I’m going to give it away. The details...
2016-12-13
701 reads
What keeps clearing my query stats?
I was building out a blog post about cardinality today and noticed that sys.dm_exec_query_stats was getting cleared my my Surface...
2016-12-27 (first published: 2016-12-08)
1,998 reads
Query Tuning 101: Debugging a procedure
I was recently asked to help tune a stored procedure that has been historically taking between 55 and 60 seconds...
2016-12-15 (first published: 2016-11-30)
4,388 reads
Query tuning 101: How to measure Query Plan I/O cost
If you’re a DBA or a developer chances are you’ve looked at a query plan or two. While looking at...
2016-11-23 (first published: 2016-11-18)
3,302 reads
Query tuning 101: Problems with IN ()
If you’re a DBA or database developer, chances are you will have to write or rewrite queries from time to...
2016-11-14 (first published: 2016-11-10)
5,700 reads
Why Halloween slowed your queries
Let me start by saying that this isn’t your typical post about the Halloween problem. This is intended to describe...
2016-10-31
982 reads
Blogs
Learning from Mistakes: T-SQL Tuesday #194
By Steve Jones
We’re a week late, once again my fault. I was still coming out of...
Stupid Things I Did With AI: ASCII Art
By Steve Jones
I ran across this article recently (https://www.gatesnotes.com/meet-bill/source-code/reader/microsoft-original-source-code) and it has a great opening piece...
Simple Talks Podcasting in 2026
By Steve Jones
I’m in the UK today, having arrived this morning in London. Hopefully, by this...
Forums
Cumulative Update 23 - KB5074819 - Database Mail - No longer working.
Hi there, Has anyone else had any trouble with Database Mail in Cumulative Update...
Script Task execution error with HTTP request
I have a script task that tries to execute a HTTP request, which seems...
SQL Server 2025 Standard Developer Edition
Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Server 2025 Standard Developer...
Question of the Day
URL Safe or Not?
If I use BASE4_ENCODE() in SQL Server 2025, is the output URL Safe by default?
See possible answers