Advent of Code
If you want your skills to be sharp, you practice. If you want to get yourself to actually do practice, you call it a “challenge”. This is what the...
2015-12-23
6 reads
Simple SQL Server
Use Compression to Combine Data Quality and Performance
We’ve been using the wrong data types for all the wrong reasons. DBAs, developers, data architects, etc. have all been...
2015-12-21
980 reads
Indexing Strategy
What do I care about when I’m playing with indexes? That’s easy. I want as few indexes as possible efficiently referenced...
2015-12-28 (first published: 2015-12-16)
3,524 reads
Picking a Clustered Index
A Clustered Index is not another term for Primary Key, and more thought should be put into the key columns...
2015-12-16 (first published: 2015-12-14)
2,499 reads
Data Compression
Data compression is often misunderstood to cost CPU in exchange for smaller size on disk. Somewhat true, but that simple...
2015-12-08
1,119 reads
Querying the Plan Cache
I love working with indexes, and I need to know what’s using them to work on them intelligently. Most of...
2015-12-08 (first published: 2015-12-01)
2,005 reads
SQL Server Error Log Reader
Reading the SQL Server Error Log is miserable. It contains very useful information you should address as soon as possible,...
2015-11-16
680 reads
Give More Feedback
I write on my blog and get a couple comments at best. I talk at conferences and a large part of...
2015-11-06 (first published: 2015-11-02)
641 reads
Extended Events Intro
Extended Events is supposed to be taking over for most of Profiler and server-side tracing functionality, but there were people...
2015-10-26
1,454 reads
Technical Interviews – How to Thrive
There’s a trick to technical interviews. Every question is looking for integrity first, and intelligence and energy second. This is...
2014-05-23 (first published: 2014-05-13)
2,764 reads
Blogs
Time to Revive our YouTube Channel
It’s been forgotten about and neglected for few years but I’ve decided to dust...
Microsoft MVP 2025: Continuing the Data Platform Journey
I am honored to announce that I have been renewed as a Microsoft MVP...
What is KTLO? Keep The Lights On vs Project Work in Agile
By Rohit Garg
Demystifying KTLO: A Deep Dive into Keep The Lights On Work in IT...
Forums
How a Legacy Logic Choked SQL Server in a 30-Year-Old Factory
Comments posted to this topic are about the item How a Legacy Logic Choked...
Navigating Multi Platform Realities in My Database Life
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Navigating Multi Platform Realities in...
Import/Export SSMS Settings issue
I have tried a number of times to export and then import my SSMS...
Question of the Day
Query Plan Regressions --
For the Question of the day, I am going to go deep, but try to be more clear, as I feel like I didn't give enough info last time, leading folks to guess the wrong answer... :) For today's question: You’re troubleshooting a performance issue on a critical stored procedure. You notice that a previously efficient query now performs a full table scan instead of an index seek. Upon investigating, you find that an NVARCHAR parameter is being compared to a VARCHAR column in the WHERE clause. What is the most likely cause of the query plan regression?
See possible answers