Powershell for DBAs
Powershell is a great tool for helping you work with multiple instances of SQL Server. This week Steve Jones talks about how and why you might want to get started.
2013-05-20
526 reads
Editorials
Honeywords in SQL Server
There's an idea of using false passwords with real accounts, honeywords, that can help us detect security issues with our servers. Is that worth implementing in SQL Server?
2013-05-16
204 reads
The Challenger
There is plenty of competition in the database platform space for SQL Server. There's a new NuSQL platform, whose vendor hopes will replace SQL Server as the platform of choice in the cloud. However Steve Jones isn't sure this will be the case.
2013-05-15
198 reads
The Platform Problem
Steve Jones sees a problem with the Azure platform. It's one that he thinks is limiting adoption, and may become a big problem for Microsoft at some point.
2013-05-14
222 reads
Data Science Sanity Checks
Phil Factor on three "sanity checks" that any data scientist must perform in order to prevent businesses from interpreting data analysis errors, or fraudulent activity, as real trends.
2013-05-13
171 reads
Visualizations
A picture can express a thousand words. That's a phrase that many of us understand well, and one we embrace when we try to present large amounts of data in reports and dashboards. This week Steve Jones asks you what visualizations you use.
2013-05-10
170 reads
A Broken Data Model
After a recent trip, Steve Jones noted a problem somewhere with the way airlines are handling passenger data.
2013-05-09
166 reads
Our Race with Machines
A future world where the machines rule, as shown in films like Terminator and the Matrix, isn't what most people want. However the fears of machines taking over much of our world are very real. Steve Jones thinks it's not as bad as you might believe.
2013-05-08
127 reads
Small Data
With all the talk about Big Data recently, Steve Jones looks at some of the issues with Big Data and how small data might be more important to you.
2013-05-07
190 reads
Microsoft Research
Research in industry can help a company leap ahead of it's peers. Steve Jones thinks this is a good idea for many companies to engage in and highlights some of the great work being done at Microsoft Research.
2013-05-06
109 reads
Blogs
T-SQL Tuesday #202 SQL Server Outage You’ll Never Forget: A Roundup
When I put together the invitation for T-SQL Tuesday #202, I wasn't sure what...
A Last Minute Trip to the EU
By Steve Jones
My life has some crazy travel stretches for sure. Between speaking, office visits, customer...
Part 3 of 3: Tuning DiskANN — R, Alpha, L, Beam Width, Recall and Latency
In Part 1, we saw how ‘Vamana’ represents vectors as nodes, connects them with...
Forums
Server-Level Table sizes
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Server-Level Table sizes
Optional Parameter Plan Optimization in SQL Server 2025: Fixing the Kitchen-Sink Search Procedure
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Optional Parameter Plan Optimization in...
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) + 1Which of the following queries produces the expected ordering and why? (Select all correct) See possible answers