The Data Model Matters
Is a data model important in modern software? Steve thinks it is and gives a few reasons why we might want to spend a little time on ensuring we have good models as we build software.
2026-06-05
165 reads
Data Modeling
Changing Data Types
Steve had to deal with a customer that changed data types in columns often. Is that something you experience?
2026-03-18
116 reads
Your Biggest Data Model Complaints
Today Steve asks which data model issues are most annoying to you.
2025-02-28
146 reads
Data Modeling Information
Data modeling can be challenging for many reasons. Steve talks about the choices you make in how you store data should be a part of that.
2023-04-19
306 reads
Moving away from an RDBMS
Today Steve looks at an article the migrates a relational model to CosmosDB.
2020-07-10
711 reads
2020-03-10
349 reads
The Power of the Data Model
A data model is far more powerful than simply a set of build instructions for DBAs. It can be used to shape business thought and actions for the benefit of all.
2017-02-14
2,038 reads
2015-05-05
1,900 reads
Antipathy for Entity Attribute Value data models
EAV models have their uses but the costs are often hidden and if not hidden, more than anticipated.
2013-01-21
8,611 reads
Restructure 100 Million Row (or more) Tables in Seconds. SRSLY!
Changing the structure of a very large table doesn't need to require a maintenance window.
2012-10-05 (first published: 2011-04-26)
22,266 reads
Blogs
Part 3 of 3: Tuning DiskANN — R, Alpha, L, Beam Width, Recall and Latency
In Part 1, we saw how ‘Vamana’ represents vectors as nodes, connects them with...
Automated SQL Server Benchmarking with HammerDB and Docker: A Complete Testing Framework
I’m excited to announce the release of a new open-source project that fully automates...
T-SQL Snapshot Backups on Availability Group Secondary Replicas
One of my favourite features of SQL Server 2022 was the T-SQL Snapshot Backups....
Forums
Optional Parameter Plan Optimization in SQL Server 2025: Fixing the Kitchen-Sink Search Procedure
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Optional Parameter Plan Optimization in...
AI Experience Gap that we keep talking about
Comments posted to this topic are about the item AI Experience Gap that we...
Question of the Day
ORDER BY alias
There is a table tmp_tab:
CREATE TABLE tmp_tab ( id int, val int );
INSERT INTO tmp_tab VALUES (1, 1), (2, NULL), (3, 3), (4, 4), (5, 5);You want to order the rows ids by the following expression:
ISNULL(val, id) + 1Which of the following queries produces the expected ordering and why? (Select all correct) See possible answers