When Page Prefetching Takes a Back Seat – Exploring Trace Flag 652 in SQL Server
Learn how a trace flag affects SQL Server reading from disk and where this might be a useful thing for you to enable.
2025-09-24
2,421 reads
SQL Server internal storage
2025-05-16
617 reads
2025-01-15
1,857 reads
What happens when we drop a column on a SQL Server table? Where's my space?
You have dropped a column and wondering why you haven't recovered any space? Let's take a look.
2024-08-01 (first published: 2024-04-26)
4,669 reads
Identify Tables With Dropped Columns
How easily can we find tables with dropped columns that need cleanup?
2024-06-07
2,456 reads
2024-04-10
451 reads
Understanding CRUD Operations on Tables with B-tree Indexes, Page-splits, and Fragmentation
Introduction Every DML transaction reads the data before it makes any changes. Not only during a SELECT query, but when you run any DML statement, insert, update, or delete, SQL Server first fetches a bunch of pages into the buffer pool locating the desired rows and changes them while synchronously writing to the transaction log […]
2021-05-10
8,198 reads
Understanding CRUD Operations Against Heaps and Forwarding Pointers
In this article, we examine how data changes are made against heaps.
2021-05-03
4,808 reads
Understanding the Internals of a Data Page
In Part 1 of this series, we examine the structure of data pages and how your tables are stored on these pages.
2021-04-13
19,685 reads
2020-06-26
643 reads
Blogs
The Book of Redgate: Spread across the world
By Steve Jones
This was Redgate in 2010, spread across the globe. First the EU/US Here’s Asia...
Merry Christmas
By John
Today is Christmas and while I do not expect anybody to actual be reading...
Self-Hosting a Photo Server the Whole Family Can Use
By Bert Wagner
Until recently, my family's 90,000+ photos have been hidden away in the depths of...
Forums
Happy Holidays, Let's Do Nerdy Stuff
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Happy Holidays, Let's Do Nerdy...
UNISTR Escape
Comments posted to this topic are about the item UNISTR Escape
Celebrating Tomorrow
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Celebrating Tomorrow
Question of the Day
UNISTR Escape
In SQL Server 2025, I run this command:
SELECT UNISTR('*3041*308A*304C\3068 and good night', '*') as "A Classic";
What is returned? (assume the database has an appropriate collation)
A: 
B: 
C: 
See possible answers