Department of Redundancy Department
Ever wonder all the reasons that we use databases instead of file systems? While we don’t think of it too much anymore, the first reason that databases came into existence was to remove redundancies.
2024-04-12
Database Design
2024-01-05
614 reads
2023-11-27
6,108 reads
Having Data Modeling Standards
Today Steve talks about data modeling and how standards can transfer knowledge between developers.
2023-11-22
467 reads
First Normal Form Gets No Respect
Dr. Codd first described the relational model in a paper in Communications of the ACM (CACM 13 No 6; June 1970). Some more work followed up after that by other people, giving us normal forms and other things we have taken for granted for 50+ years.
2023-10-27
Designing Databases for Distributed Systems
Several data management patterns have emerged for microservices and cloud-native solutions. Learn important patterns to manage data in a distributed environment.
2023-10-18
What Is Good Database Design?
Find out how good database design is essential to ensure data accuracy, consistency, and integrity and that databases are efficient, reliable, and easy to use.
2023-10-16
How Would You Design This: Scheduling Classes
One of the challenges for many database developers is coming up with a good design that not only meets the specifications but also performs well in queries. Relational databases often seek some level of normalization, which reduces the update load for a system but might require more effort work from developers to write queries. Many […]
2023-09-22
2,277 reads
How Would You Design This: Tracking Travels
A fun contest from Steve asks you to design a system that tracks travels for a fictitious business.
2023-08-11
1,711 reads
Combine DATE and TIME to DATETIME2 in SQL Server
The most common method on the internet for combining DATE and TIME columns in SQL Server is incorrect. This article demonstrates why that and other methods are incorrect and two lesser known high performance methods that produce correct results even for the "edge cases".
2023-08-07
24,354 reads
Blogs
Who Are You Doing It For?
By Brian Kelley
But as I've matured over the years, I came to realize that I needed...
Presenting Twice in May 2026
By alevyinroc
I will be presenting my latest session, Documenting Your Work for Worry-Free Vacations, in-person...
Finding the Next Sequence Value: #SQLNewBlogger
By Steve Jones
I saw a question asking about the next sequence value and decided to try...
Forums
DB Design Methods
I've read a few posts regarding what we use to design DB models and...
Auto Update Statistics not triggering on filtered indexes
I've got a table with 186,703,969 rows, about 300GB of data. There are several...
What is the difference between SQL Server and SQL Database?
I created a SQL Database in Azure Portal but I've just noticed it also...
Question of the Day
An Unusual Identity
What values are returned when I run this code?
CREATE TABLE dbo.IdentityTest2
(
id NUMERIC(10,0) IDENTITY(10,10) PRIMARY KEY,
somevalue VARCHAR(20)
)
GO
INSERT dbo.IdentityTest2
(
somevalue
)
VALUES
( 'Steve')
, ('Bill')
GO
SELECT top 10
id
FROM dbo.IdentityTest2 See possible answers