Software Patents
Patents are one way that governments can spur innovation. However many people think software patents should be eliminated. Steve Jones doesn't think so, but would like reform.
2017-11-07 (first published: 2014-01-30)
157 reads
Editorial
The DBA is Dead
Is the DBA Dead? Steve Jones scoffs at the notion put forth in an article and says we'll be using DBAs for a long time. He does, however, admit the role is changing.
2014-01-29
476 reads
Servicing SQL Server in the Future
There hasn't been a service pack for SQL Server in a long time. Without knowing the plans for the future, Steve Jones asks you to express your own opinions.
2014-01-28
210 reads
SQL Best practices, policies and code-smells.
Phil factor warns against taking SQL Coding 'best-practices' too much at face value. They can, at best, assist in reviewing code, and at the worst they can prevent the developer from finding the best solution.
2014-01-27
489 reads
Management at Scale
Could you manage 20,000 databases? That's how many servers each person at Facebook has to manage in operations.
2014-01-27
188 reads
Common Checks
This Friday Steve Jones wants to know what types of things are you checking for on your instances. What items can cause you issues if you don't proactively monitor for them.
2014-01-24
215 reads
Too Much Choice
More information and choice are generally good things, but there can be problems. Steve Jones notes that we can't let freedom paralyze us.
2014-01-23
116 reads
Software in 2014
What's the state of software in 2014. After reading Tim Bray's analysis, Steve Jones presents his.
2014-01-22
214 reads
Uncontrolled Code
Excel is used quite often to build software, or at least, it's worksheets and formulas simulate software. Steve Jones notes there are lots of problems with this practice.
2014-01-21
268 reads
Redundant Redundancy
When DBAs too often find themselves trading sleep for Megabytes, it's time for a different approach to detection and alerting of disk space problems. So argues Rodney Landrum.
2014-01-20
114 reads
Blogs
SQL Saturday Boston Slides and Code
By Steve Jones
Thanks to everyone who attended my sessions today at SQL Saturday Boston 2025. I’ve...
Scaling SQL Server 2025 Vector Search with Load-Balanced Ollama Embeddings
SQL Server 2025 introduces native support for vector data types and external AI models....
Advice I Like: Fear and Imagination
By Steve Jones
Fear is fueled by a lack of imagination. The antidote to fear is not...
Forums
How to use data pre-computed in previous ETL SSIS Nodes?
I'm building ETL packages in SSIS. My data comes from an OLE DB Source...
Building AI Governance and Policies- First Steps
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Building AI Governance and Policies-...
Simple delete causes table scan on other tables with foreign key
Why is sql doing a full scan VS seeking on the index? I've included...
Question of the Day
Checking Identities
The DBCC CHECKIDENT command is used when working with identity values. I have a table with 10 rows in it that looks like this:
TravelLogID CityID StartDate EndDate 1 1 2025-01-11 2025-01-16 2 2 2025-01-11 2025-01-16 3 3 2025-01-11 2025-01-16 4 4 2025-01-11 2025-01-16 5 5 2025-01-11 2025-01-16 6 6 2025-01-11 2025-01-16 7 7 2025-01-11 2025-01-16 8 8 2025-01-11 2025-01-16 9 9 2025-01-11 2025-01-16 10 10 2025-01-11 2025-01-16The docs for DBCC CHECKIDENT say this if I run with only the table parameter: "If the current identity value for a table is less than the maximum identity value stored in the identity column, it is reset using the maximum value in the identity column. " I run this code:
DELETE dbo.TravelLog WHERE TravelLogID >= 9
GO
DBCC CHECKIDENT(TravelLog, RESEED)
GO
INSERT dbo.TravelLog
(
CityID,
StartDate,
EndDate
)
VALUES
(4, '2025-09-14', '2025-09-17')
GO
What is the identity value for the new row inserted by the insert statement above? See possible answers