My August Christmas Card
Do you ever get the Christmas card that features a beautiful picture of a family on the front, and a letter catching you up on their year on the...
2020-08-28 (first published: 2020-08-18)
235 reads
The Non-Cluttered Index
The Length Limitations of LEN()?
I was using LEN() to troubleshoot an issue I was having with a dynamically constructed string truncating while inserting into an NVARCHAR(MAX) column. Since I know that NVARCHAR(MAX) has...
2020-07-22 (first published: 2020-07-14)
1,612 reads
New Article For Simple Talk!
Hi All, While I haven’t been writing here, I have been writing. I have a new article that has just been published on Simple Talk, and I am developing...
2020-04-16
51 reads
Level Up!
Great news! I was accepted this weekend to speak at SQLSaturday Los Angeles! This officially counts as a level up for me for my deadlock resolution quest. The event...
2020-02-25
22 reads
My Deadlock Resolution Progress Report
As I wrote last month, I went through a period of feeling personally and professionally deadlocked, and flailed about for some time before I found the answer of making...
2021-04-28 (first published: 2020-02-21)
388 reads
How Do You Decide When Can Doesn't Mean Should?
An old proverb states, “Fire is a good servant but a bad master.” Put simply, it means that when controlled, fire is a life-sustaining element. We need it for...
2020-02-07
23 reads
Discover and Clean Up Schema Ownership
My colleagues and I take schema ownership seriously. The owner (with few exceptions) should always be “dbo”. Certainly, it should not be a user. Why? Because if the user...
2020-02-03
62 reads
When the DBA is Deadlocked
When I launched The Noncluttered Index last year, it was with the intention of writing at least twice a week. For a while, that was very doable. Then, work...
2021-04-23 (first published: 2020-01-14)
607 reads
Dropping Database Users and Logins: How it Can Go So Very Wrong, and How You Can Easily Fix It
I don't normally drop users and logins in production, but when I do, and it goes wrong, I do this.
2019-09-20
28 reads
Validating Replication (All or Just One Article)
You may sometimes have reports or other processes that are dependent on transactional replication being current. If that is the case, you will probably need a mechanism to check...
2019-08-09
26 reads
Blogs
Take Time to Gain Perspective
By Brian Kelley
Probably the best piece of advice I ever received is to take time to...
The Fringe Festival
By Steve Jones
I was lucky enough to take a vacation a decade ago in Edinburgh with...
Demo for Parameter Sniffing and Memory Grant Feedback
Disclaimer: The following is built with Claude Code. Just need to justify my $100/mo...
Forums
Learn From History
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The SQL Server MCP Server
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The Hidden Danger of Wildcard Operators In Join Operations
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