Baseline SQL Server with SQL Sentry Performance Advisor
Baselines can be any set of metrics that have been recorded to give you an understanding of what is the...
2013-06-24
2,891 reads
SQL Server 365
Dedicated Administrator Connection (DAC)
We all dread the scenario whereby SQL Server is under so much load and has a complete lack of resources...
2013-05-29 (first published: 2013-05-23)
3,813 reads
Object Qualification
I came across an interesting issue recently with NHibernate, now it is widely known I despise ORM’s, in my experience...
2013-05-22 (first published: 2013-05-15)
2,758 reads
DTA and Hypothetical Indexes
For those of you that don’t know DTA stands for Database Engine Tuning Adviser and is available from the Tools...
2013-05-15 (first published: 2013-05-09)
11,437 reads
SQL Server Hardware and Acronyms
Over the weekend I finished reading yet another Red Gate book, this one was SQL Server Hardware by Glenn Berry...
2013-05-07
911 reads
Index Tuning
This week I've been carrying out some performance tuning of some of the more intensive procedures in one of our environments. Using...
2013-03-21 (first published: 2013-03-14)
3,623 reads
Cost Threshold for Parallelism
Parallelism, where to start? Well let’s start right at the beginning shall we with the question, what is parallelism? Simply...
2013-02-26
3,505 reads
Fun with dates
Every year me and a group of friends attend the Royal International Air Tattoo (RIAT) at RAF Fairford, for us it...
2013-02-17
791 reads
T-SQL Gotcha
I came across an interesting issue a few days ago that I thought I would blog about. The issue is...
2013-02-15
1,597 reads
Script Replication with PowerShell
I promised you some PowerShell scripts this year and this post is the first one. I can see the value...
2013-02-14
6,771 reads
Blogs
Don’t Miss Out – SQL Server Query Tuning Fundamentals Starts Next Monday!
Next Monday, February 9, 2026, my one-day live online training SQL Server Query Tuning...
Monday Monitor Tips: SQL Auditing Preview
By Steve Jones
One of the features we advocates have been advocating for is a better way...
SQL Server 2025 CU1 Fixes the Docker Desktop AVX Issue on macOS
Microsoft fixed the AVX instruction issue in SQL Server 2025 CU1. The container now...
Forums
25 Years of SQL Server Central
Comments posted to this topic are about the item 25 Years of SQL Server...
The Decoded Value
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Decoded Value
Deploying SQL Server Developer Edition in Kubernetes: A Cost-Effective Alternative to RDS
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Deploying SQL Server Developer Edition...
Question of the Day
The Decoded Value
In SQL Server 2025, what is returned from this code:
DECLARE @message VARCHAR(50) = 'Hello SQL Server 2025!'; DECLARE @encoded VARCHAR(MAX); SET @encoded = BASE64_ENCODE(CAST(@message AS VARBINARY(1000))); SELECT BASE64_DECODE(@encoded)See possible answers