SQL Server Infernals – Circle 5: Inconsistent Baptists
There’s a place in the SQL Server hell where you can find poor souls wandering the paths of their circle,...
2015-07-23 (first published: 2015-07-17)
2,934 reads
SpaghettiDBA
SQL Server Infernals – Circle 4: Anarchic Designers
Constraints are sometimes annoying in real life, but no society can exist without rules and regulations. The same concept is...
2015-07-07
818 reads
SQL Server Infernals – Circle 3: Shaky Typers
Choosing the right data type for your columns is first of all a design decision that has tremendous impact on...
2015-07-10 (first published: 2015-07-02)
2,226 reads
SQL Server Infernals – Circle 2: Generalizers
Object-Oriented programming taught us that generalizing is a good thing and, whenever possible, we should do it. Complex class hierarchies...
2015-06-29 (first published: 2015-06-24)
977 reads
SQL Server Infernals – Circle 1: Undernormalizers
There’s a special place in the SQL Server Hell for those who design their schema without following the Best Practices....
2015-06-17
868 reads
Announcing SQL Server Infernals
Today I’m starting a new blog series called “SQL Server Infernals”.
Throughout this series, I will take your hand and walk...
2015-06-09
670 reads
Native Client Aliases don’t like Trailing Spaces
I usually don’t post small things like this, but today I fought with this obnoxious problem long enough to convince me that...
2015-06-02 (first published: 2015-05-26)
1,559 reads
Counting the number of rows in a table
Don’t be fooled by the title of this post: while counting the number of rows in a table is a...
2015-05-25 (first published: 2015-05-18)
9,257 reads
How to post a T-SQL question on a public forum
If you want to have faster turnaround on your forum questions, you will need to provide enough information to the...
2015-04-24
2,281 reads
Tracking Table Usage and Identifying Unused Objects
One of the things I hate the most about “old” databases is the fact that unused tables are kept forever,...
2015-04-29 (first published: 2015-04-20)
16,432 reads
Blogs
Advice I Like: Knots
By Steve Jones
Learn how to tie a bowline knot. Practice in the dark. With one hand....
Shifting Mindsets: Why FinOps is Essential for Cloud Efficiency
By HeyMo0sh
As a DevOps practitioner, I’ve always focused on performance, scalability, and automation. But as...
March 2026 SQL Server Security Updates
By Brian Kelley
On Patch Tuesday, in addition to OS and Office security patches, Microsoft also released...
Forums
Multiple Deployment Processes
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How to Use sqlpackage to Detect Schema Drift Between Azure SQL Databases
Comments posted to this topic are about the item How to Use sqlpackage to...
Upgrading Admin Queries
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Upgrading Admin Queries
Question of the Day
Upgrading Admin Queries
I have a query from a former DBA that we run on SQL Server 2025 to check on database metadata. This query references sys.sysaltfiles. I want to refactor this code to be more modern. Which DMV should I reference instead?
See possible answers