An Alternative to SELECT COUNT(*) for Better Performance
Sometimes rapid code development doesn't always produce the most efficient code. Take the age old line of code SELECT COUNT(*)...
2013-05-07
5,284 reads
Everyday SQL
Merging SQL Server and Softball Just for Fun
With opening day of Major League Baseball season finally here, I thought I’d take the time to cover two of...
2013-04-02
1,281 reads
Use Powershell to Pick Up what Database Mirroring Leaves Behind
Database mirroring has been around since SQL Server 2005, and it's turned out to be an excellent step up from...
2013-03-26
2,449 reads
T-SQL Tuesday #40 - Proportional Fill within a Filegroup
T-SQL Tuesday #40 is underway, and this month's host is Jennifer McCown (blog|twitter). The topic is about File and Filegroup...
2013-03-15 (first published: 2013-03-12)
2,890 reads
Dealing with a Fragmented Heap
Just for the record, this happens to be one of my favorite interview questions to ask candidates.
At some point in...
2013-03-05
2,331 reads
The Performance Impact to Prefix Stored Procedures with sp_
Last week I ran across a blog post by Axel Achten (B|T) that outlined a few reasons why you should...
2013-02-19
1,459 reads
T-SQL Tuesday - Use Powershell to Restore a Database on a Different Server
T-SQL Tuesday - This month's party is hosted by Wayne Sheffield (blog|twitter), and the topic is about Powershell and how to use...
2013-02-12
8,152 reads
What is DBCC SHOW_STATISTICS Telling Me About My Data?
Per Books Online, DBCC SHOW_STATISTICS displays current query optimization statistics for a table or indexed view. Basically it shows you...
2013-02-14 (first published: 2013-02-05)
5,476 reads
How to Remove (Undo) Table Partitioning
I have seen plenty of articles and blog posts out there for how to setup and implement table partitioning, but...
2013-02-04 (first published: 2013-01-29)
8,729 reads
sp_PerformanceCounters - Get a Health Check of SQL Server's Performance
During your career as a DBA, you'll run across articles by SQL experts or other DBAs that just give you...
2013-01-22
1,346 reads
Blogs
AI: Blog a Day – Day 5: Notebooks, Hugging face models and Fine Tuning
By Vinay Thakur
Continuing from Day 4 where we learned Encoder, Decoder, and Attention Mechanism, today we...
AI: Blog a Day – Day 4: Transformers – Encoder, Decoder, and Attention
By Vinay Thakur
Continuing from Day 3 where we covered LLM models open/closed and their parameters, Today...
Flyway Tips: Multiple Projects
By Steve Jones
One of the nice things about Flyway Desktop is that it helps you manage...
Forums
Can an Azure App Service Managed Identity be used for SQL Login?
I'm fairly certain I know the answer to this from digging into it yesterday,...
Azure Synapse database refresh
Hi Team, I am trying to refresh the Azure Synapse Dedicated pool from production...
how to write this query?
hi everyone I am not sure how to write the query that will produce...
Question of the Day
Fun with JSON I
I have some data in a table:
CREATE TABLE #test_data
(
id INT PRIMARY KEY,
name VARCHAR(100),
birth_date DATE
);
-- Step 2: Insert rows
INSERT INTO #test_data
VALUES
(1, 'Olivia', '2025-01-05'),
(2, 'Emma', '2025-03-02'),
(3, 'Liam', '2025-11-15'),
(4, 'Noah', '2025-12-22');
If I run this query, how many rows are returned?
SELECT *
FROM OPENJSON(
(
SELECT t.* FROM #test_data AS t FOR JSON PATH
)
) t; See possible answers