Which Should You Use: VARCHAR or NVARCHAR?
You’re building a new table or adding a column, and you wanna know which datatype to use: VARCHAR or NVARCHAR?
2025-11-03
Data Storage
Identify Tables With Dropped Columns
How easily can we find tables with dropped columns that need cleanup?
2024-06-07
2,599 reads
Long Term Storage
Long term data storage isn't something we always need for databases, but it is something the world needs. A new technology has promise for those use cases, both in durability and preserving the algorithms needed.
2022-06-24
388 reads
Do We Care About Disks?
I ran across a tip on MSSQLTips from Joe Gavin recently, and it got me thinking about hardware and disks. For a lot of us, we deal with servers and storage, and not disks. While we might have a disk on a laptop or desktop, most of the production systems just attach to remote storage. […]
2021-11-03
302 reads
Storage 101: Welcome to the Wonderful World of Storage
Understanding all the storage options available to...
2019-12-30
SQL Server Storage Internals 101
This article is an extract from the book Tribal SQL. In this article, Mark S. Rasmussen offers a concise introduction to the physical storage internals behind SQL Server databases. He doesn't dive into every detail, but provides a simple, clear picture of how SQL Server stores data.
2013-10-21
3,767 reads
Blogs
My Social Media Rules
By Brian Kelley
I developed these rules a while back, before COVID. I had a period of...
Why Use TRY_PARSE(): #SQLNewBlogger
By Steve Jones
Someone asked why I would use TRY_PARSE after I posted a question at SQL...
A Guatemalan's Guide to Drinking Coffee Properly
My mugI grew up surrounded by coffee farms in Guatemala and somehow spent most...
Forums
Partitioning a table with TEXTIMAGE_ON option
I have a table that ends in ON [PRIMARY] TEXTIMAGE_ON [PRIMARY]. I'm about to...
OUTER APPLY Fundamentals: Part 2
Comments posted to this topic are about the item OUTER APPLY Fundamentals: Part 2
Building Great Software
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Building Great Software
Question of the Day
The Range of Customers
I have this data in the OrderHeader table in a SQL Server 2025 database (ordered by CustomerID ASC):
orderid orderdate customerid complete 3 2025-05-10 00:00:00.0002 1 21 2024-01-10 00:00:00.0003 1 15 2023-10-28 00:00:00.0004 1 13 2025-03-08 00:00:00.0006 1 11 2024-04-02 00:00:00.0007 1If I run this query, how many rows are returned?
SELECT * from dbo.OrderHeader where customerid between 3 and '6'See possible answers