Test Before Deciding
How do you decide what improvements to make to your SQL Server? Or what settings to turn off? Having hard and fast rules isn't a great idea, and Steve Jones talks about why.
2011-03-21
181 reads
Editorials
Looking at SOX
This Friday Steve Jones asks what impact the Sarbanes-Oxley act has had on your job. After nearly a decade since the act was passed, is it intrusive in the workplace or just another part of your job.
2011-03-18
159 reads
Implicit and Explicit Conversions
Code that depends on implicit conversions can live for years in production without issue. However Steve Jones says that you shouldn't depend on these conversions
2011-03-17
455 reads
The Business
How is your IT relationship with "the business"? Andy Warren asks today if there is a real client relationship between the implementers of technology and the consumers.
2011-03-16
260 reads
A SQL Conference In The Sun
SQL Connections, part of Dev Connections, is coming in a few weeks. Now is the time to register and get the chance to learn in a sunny location.
2011-03-15
79 reads
NoSQL is Not the Answer
NoSQL solves some problems in the database world, but not all of them. It's also not an evolution of the relational database, but as Steve Jones notes, it has some features we might see in SQL Server.
2011-03-14
459 reads
Serialising tabular and relational data.
Guest editorial by Phil who bemoans the difficulty of transferring tabular data by file between differing databases, spreadsheets and analysis tools.
2011-03-14
185 reads
Max Memory
This Friday Steve Jones asks for who's got the best bragging rights. Let us know this Friday just much RAM is a lot.
2011-03-11
335 reads
DBA Concerns
A survey of Oracle DBAs shows them having a number of security concerns. Steve Jones thinks that a survey of SQL Server DBAs would be similar.
2011-03-10
287 reads
Quality Over Timing
Is quality job one for software companies? Steve Jones asks what you think and comments on why quality might not be as high as we would like.
2011-03-09
182 reads
Blogs
Automated SQL Server Benchmarking with HammerDB and Docker: A Complete Testing Framework
I’m excited to announce the release of a new open-source project that fully automates...
T-SQL Snapshot Backups on Availability Group Secondary Replicas
One of my favourite features of SQL Server 2022 was the T-SQL Snapshot Backups....
The Book of Redgate: Hours
By Steve Jones
I have said and written this many times: Redgate Software is the type of...
Forums
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...
AI Experience Gap that we keep talking about
Comments posted to this topic are about the item AI Experience Gap that we...
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