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Pros and Cons of Database Sharding for Performance and Maintenance

  • Article

Large databases usually have a negative impact on maintenance time, scalability and query performance. For maintenance, these large single databases have to be backed up daily while the amount of actual changing data might be small. For performance, tables without correct indexes result in full table or clustered index scans. As the data grows the total query time increase linearly. How can we decrease downtime for the maintenance window for large databases and optimize the performance of daily queries?

2026-07-20

Stairway icons Database Deployments

Concurrency and Baseline Control: Level 5 of the Stairway to Reliable Database Deployments

  • Stairway Step

As database development scales across multiple contributors, concurrency becomes an inherent aspect of the process. Changes that are individually correct may still conflict when developed against a shifting baseline. This level introduces a disciplined approach to managing parallel changesets by controlling their scope, identifying overlap, and resolving conflicts through realignment. By ensuring that only one changeset retains its original baseline while others are adapted accordingly, deployments remain predictable and consistent. Once released, changesets are treated as immutable, and further evolution proceeds through new, forward-only changes.

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2026-06-24

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Question of the Day

ORDER BY alias

There is a table tmp_tab: 

CREATE TABLE tmp_tab (
id int,
val int
);
INSERT INTO tmp_tab VALUES
(1, 1),
(2, NULL),
(3, 3),
(4, 4),
(5, 5);
You want to order the rows ids by the following expression: 
    ISNULL(val, id) + 1
Which of the following queries produces the expected ordering and why? (Select all correct)

See possible answers