Don't Let Corner Cases Drive Your Design
When we design a database or system, we often do so with corner cases in mind. We don't have to do this.
2025-12-01
101 reads
Database Design and Implementation
Being Mindful of Design Time
Do you take the time to model and design your database? Steve thinks this is important, even while trying to make changes quicker to adapt to changing requirements.
2025-11-14
92 reads
Poor Name Choice
Steve has a few thoughts on the names we choose for tables, columns, files, and more.
2025-11-07
133 reads
Data Encoding Schemes
Your choice of how you encode data can be significant. With computers and databases, you have a wide range of options. As a programmer, you will likely be called upon at some time in your career to design and coding scheme for particular application. It would really help if you at least avoided designing a bad one.
2025-06-30
A Domain for Data
A SQL DDL statement that Steve never knew about is the subject of today's editorial.
2025-04-04
123 reads
Scales & Measurements
If you’re going to work with databases, you probably ought to know something about data. In particular, we don’t put data directly into a database; we have to encode it and represent it in a format which a machine can handle.
2025-04-02
A Poor Data Model
Steve has a few thoughts on natural keys, which often turn out not to be as unique as we expect.
2025-03-03
156 reads
Database Sharding: Strategies for Seamless Scaling and Performance Optimization
Companies of all sizes and across industries are struggling to cope with an explosion of data never before seen in the short history of computing. As applications reach new levels of sophistication and become deeply interconnected, these companies find themselves increasingly overworked, overheated, and at their wits’ end, desperately trying to squeeze just a bit more performance and availability out of their aging database architectures.
2024-10-11
Uniqueness, Keys, and Identity
If you’ve ever had a traditional logic course, you’ll have run into “The Law of Identity” as the founding principle of all Western thought. It says that: “To be is to be something in particular; to be nothing in particular or anything in general, is to be nothing at all.”
2024-10-07
Storing and Retrieving the Initialization and Configuration Data for Applications
All developers hit the problem of how and where to store and set their configuration, profile, or initial data. A long time ago, it was generally decided that simple text files containing key/values were best, stored with the application. After all, you are relying on being able to entice busy people to get the permanent settings right for their requirements, folks who are generally not interested in your elegant computer science constructs. Not only that, but the settings must be parsed very quickly and efficiently, otherwise a process that uses the tool will slow to a crawl.
2024-10-04
Blogs
Resetting on the AI hype train
By Brian Kelley
There's a great article from MIT Technology Review about resetting on the hype of...
A New Word: Etherness
By Steve Jones
etherness – n. the wistful feeling of looking around a gathering of loved ones,...
Vibe Coding a Login Tracking System
By Steve Jones
A customer was asking about tracking logins and logouts in Redgate Monitor. We don’t...
Forums
The Microsoft SQL Year in Review
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Microsoft SQL Year in...
T-SQL in SQL Server 2025: The || Operator
Comments posted to this topic are about the item T-SQL in SQL Server 2025:...
Your Value from a Conference
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Your Value from a Conference
Question of the Day
UNISTR Basics
What does this code return in SQL Server 2025+? (assume the database has an appropriate collation)
SELECT UNISTR('Hello 4E16754C') AS 'A Classic';
A: 
B: 
See possible answers