Avoid “Constants” in T-SQL
Here we look at a common query "anti-pattern" that can create performance problems - and how you work around it.
2023-06-14
398 reads
Matthew McGiffen DBA
Executing Queries Using Always Encrypted
In this post we’ll look at how you interact with data that is encrypted using Always Encrypted. The examples here will show how you run queries from SSMS, in...
2023-06-13
33 reads
Success vs. Scalability: Why your biggest success might also be your biggest disaster
There is a scenario I have seen again and again. A company has developed a nice piece of software which many clients are running with happily. Then along comes...
2023-06-12
17 reads
Parameter Sensitive Plan Optimization in SQL Server 2022. What is it and is it any good?
Parameter Sensitive Plan (PSP) optimization is a new feature in SQL Server 2022 that aims to improve the performance of parameterized queries. It is part of the Intelligent Query...
2023-06-26 (first published: 2023-06-08)
328 reads
Identify the (Top 20) most expensive queries across your SQL Server using Query Store
Script to identify the most expensive queries on your database server using the Query Store DMVs. This allows you to look at data from a specific time frame, as...
2023-06-07
319 reads
Setting Up Always Encrypted
In this post we're going to go through the steps to set up Always Encrypted and create an encrypted column. As with my last post we're looking at the...
2023-06-06
32 reads
What is Always Encrypted and how does it work?
Always Encrypted was a new encryption feature added to SQL Server with the 2016 version of the product. Initially it was just available in enterprise edition, but from SQL...
2023-06-21 (first published: 2023-06-05)
358 reads
Introduction to SQL Server Query Store
Introduced with SQL 2016, Query Store was, probably without doubt, the most anticipated and talked out new feature. In this post we'll just take a brief look at it,...
2023-06-14 (first published: 2023-05-31)
621 reads
SQL Server Backup Encryption and Compression
In SQL Server you can also compress your encrypted backups. Unlike TDE this has been possible with Backup Encryption since the feature was first made available, and there have...
2023-06-12 (first published: 2023-05-24)
353 reads
Statistics Parser
Using Statistics Parser to easily read output from STATISTICS IO and STATISTICS TIME.
2023-05-23
286 reads
Blogs
Why Optimize CPU for RDS SQL Server is a game changer
One feature that I have been waiting for years! The new announcement around optimize...
Performance tuning KubeVirt for SQL Server
Following on from my last post about Getting Started With KubeVirt & SQL Server,...
T-SQL Tuesday #193 – A Note to Your Past, and a Warning from Your Future
By DesertDBA
I haven’t posted in a while (well, not here at least since I’ve been...
Forums
Change Tracking – Troubleshooting
I have change tracking configured in several databases, in QA and production environments, and...
is there a no code way to limit an ssis extract from excel to the 1st 21 rows?
is there a no code way to limit an ssis extract from excel to...
Pivot but preserve all rows on Aggregate column
Hello Need help in pivoting this data set, the Pivot takes MIN/MAX on a...
Question of the Day
What is the PRODUCT
In SQL Server 2025, what does this return?
CREATE TABLE Numbers ( n INT) GO INSERT dbo.Numbers ( n ) VALUES (1), (2), (3) GO SELECT PRODUCT(n) FROM dbo.NumbersSee possible answers