When do Distribution Statistics Get Updated?
Statistics objects are important to us for allowing SQL to make good estimates of the row-counts involved in different parts...
2017-07-05
770 reads
Matthew McGiffen DBA
Row-count Estimates when there are no Statistics
I was discussing Cardinality Estimation with a colleague recently and the question came up, what cardinality does SQL Server use...
2019-04-26 (first published: 2017-06-28)
2,877 reads
Statistics and Cardinality Estimation
Cardinality
This is a term originally from Mathematics, generally defined as “The number of objects in a given set or grouping”....
2019-04-26 (first published: 2017-06-20)
5,800 reads
What’s an “Index” and how do they work?
What is an Index?
We often hear indexes explained using the analogy of an index in the back of a book....
2017-06-12
1,580 reads
SQL Puzzle 1: Magic Squares
This is the first in what I hope will be a semi-regular series of recreational puzzles where SQL can be...
2017-06-07
1,566 reads
Working with Data in Always Encrypted
In this post we’re going to create some encrypted columns in a table in a test database and look at...
2017-06-06
10,582 reads
Statistics Parser
In the last post we looked at using the STATISTICS IO and STATISTICS TIME commands to measure query performance.
If you’ve...
2019-04-26 (first published: 2017-05-31)
2,331 reads
Understanding Keys and Certificates with Always Encrypted
Always Encrypted on SQL 2016 is pretty easy to set up. There’s even a single wizard to guide you through...
2019-04-26 (first published: 2017-05-30)
8,469 reads
Tuning Parallelism on SQL Server
Parallelism and MAXDOP
There’s no doubt that parallelism in SQL is a great thing. It enables large queries to share the...
2017-05-26
5,295 reads
Measuring SQL Query Performance
When running workshops on the subject of SQL Query Performance the first question I always ask is how do we measure...
2019-04-26 (first published: 2017-05-24)
36,273 reads
Blogs
A New Word: on tenderhooks
By Steve Jones
on tenderhooks – adj. feeling the primal satisfaction of being needed by someone, which...
Ramblings about data communities and your contributions, no excuses
By DataOnWheels
I have been active in the data community throughout my career. I have met...
SQL Server Journey till 2025 (brief)
By Vinay Thakur
Quick Summary for Microsoft SQL Server till 2025, I am fortunate to be part...
Forums
Ola Hallengren Index Optimize Maintenance can we have data compression = page
I have a quick question on Ola Hallengren Index Optimize Maintenance . Do we...
how do i map the "current" object entry in for each to one variable
hi, in an ssis for each loop over an object variable called MyListVariable, i...
Simulating Mercury’s Orbital Motion Using Pure T-SQL (NASA 2025 Dataset)
SQL Server is typically viewed as a transactional or analytical database engine. However, it...
Question of the Day
String Similarity I
On SQL Server 2025, when I run this, what is returned?
SELECT EDIT_DISTANCE_SIMILARITY('SQL Server', 'MySQL') See possible answers