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
394 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
25 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
15 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)
295 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
291 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
28 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)
345 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)
604 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)
350 reads
Statistics Parser
Using Statistics Parser to easily read output from STATISTICS IO and STATISTICS TIME.
2023-05-23
280 reads
Blogs
Logging in Azure Data Factory data flows
By Rayis Imayev
(2025-June-15) Long gone are the days when a data engineer could simply focus on building...
ADF: Publish suddenly includes everything where it used to be incremental changes since the last publish
By Ed Elliott
I recently encountered an interesting issue with ADF where the publish feature suddenly attempted...
Beginner’s Guide: Create a File Organizer CLI Tool in Rust
Image from Afdhaluddin on ShutterstockCLI which is generally referred to as Command Line Interface...
Forums
How Many Can Be the Greatest
Comments posted to this topic are about the item How Many Can Be the...
How to process images and analyze charts with AI
Comments posted to this topic are about the item How to process images and...
Patching the Patch
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Patching the Patch
Question of the Day
How Many Can Be the Greatest
I am trying to analyze a number of columns in a large table to determine the highest value for each row. In SQL Server 2022, we have the GREATEST function, which will return the greatest value from those columns passed in. How many columns can I include in an expression like this:
select GREATEST( col1, col2, col3, ...)See possible answers