How Important Are Real Time Decisions?
There has been a push to build real time analytics and decision support systems. Steve discusses whether this is a good idea for many organizations.
2025-12-05
112 reads
Editorials
SQL Server Licensing is Simple
Over the years I've had no shortage of licensing questions for SQL Server. At times it's felt a little crazy. Look at the licensing guide. Choose EE or SE and the number of cores. Then check if you're using VMs. Oh, and consider the cloud, and which cloud you're running a workload on. It's simple […]
2025-12-03
258 reads
Don't Let Corner Cases Drive Your Design
When we design a database or system, we often do so with corner cases in mind. We don't have to do this.
2025-12-01
113 reads
FinOps - the new name for performance tuning
This year I have been speaking with an increasing number of people about FinOps and what it means. Fundamentally, it is all about getting a handle on the cost for our technology spend. When we step back and look at the bigger picture it also has ramifications on corporate Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) programs […]
2025-11-29
136 reads
2025-11-28
64 reads
Done is Better than Good
Getting something done is important, but so is the quality level. Steve has a few thoughts today.
2025-11-26
98 reads
Is Data Modeling Common?
Today Steve tasks data modeling and wonders how many people still build and maintain models.
2025-11-24
125 reads
Personal Contact Is Vital
I'm writing this while in hiding at the PASS Data Community Summit that's taking place in Seattle this week. I just had a real surprise, finding out that DocumentDB is PostgreSQL under the covers and always has been. However, as much as I enjoy talking PostgreSQL, for the moment, I'll shut up about it. Instead, […]
2025-11-22
73 reads
2025-11-21
152 reads
The case for "Understanding our business" training
Today we have a guest editorial reminding us that business knowledge is important, and we could all use some training.
2025-11-19
135 reads
Blogs
Who Are You Doing It For?
By Brian Kelley
But as I've matured over the years, I came to realize that I needed...
Presenting Twice in May 2026
By alevyinroc
I will be presenting my latest session, Documenting Your Work for Worry-Free Vacations, in-person...
Finding the Next Sequence Value: #SQLNewBlogger
By Steve Jones
I saw a question asking about the next sequence value and decided to try...
Forums
DB Design Methods
I've read a few posts regarding what we use to design DB models and...
Auto Update Statistics not triggering on filtered indexes
I've got a table with 186,703,969 rows, about 300GB of data. There are several...
What is the difference between SQL Server and SQL Database?
I created a SQL Database in Azure Portal but I've just noticed it also...
Question of the Day
An Unusual Identity
What values are returned when I run this code?
CREATE TABLE dbo.IdentityTest2
(
id NUMERIC(10,0) IDENTITY(10,10) PRIMARY KEY,
somevalue VARCHAR(20)
)
GO
INSERT dbo.IdentityTest2
(
somevalue
)
VALUES
( 'Steve')
, ('Bill')
GO
SELECT top 10
id
FROM dbo.IdentityTest2 See possible answers