.. The goal is to have a single truth for each datapoint, if we can achieve that then we can make decisions about whether to copy that data somewhere...

What we use is a combination of sql traces, pings, event logs, application APIs, and for some web applications: parsing http responses. All of it duct taped together with PowerShell...

If your organization is like mine and includes TB scale tables, dozens of developers coding SQL, and hundreds of end users, then adding a new index should definitely be something...

First we must understand what is the external function of a "primary" key (versus an alternate key or candidate key). Once you understand a primary key's external role in relation...

When we speak of T-SQL "heresies", it seems we're speaking of anti-patterns. Some things developers do (like inline sub-queries, scalar functions, and SELECT *) greatly simplify the code and may...

On-prem virtualization and cloud hosting makes it easy to spin up new instances, but on the downside it can also lead to a sprawling ghetto of quickly prototyped databases that...

The primary database I work with could be best described as an operational data store; containing time versioned copies of tables from multiple OLTP data sources. There are high volume...

Regardless of what formal process you follow and which tools you use for the delivery mechanism, many of us have known for years that it's best to perform iterative deployments.

Views are also a good way to abstract the application from the underlying data model: hiding columns the application doesn't need, computed columns, row filtering, or switching in a new...

Not to be confused with a "BlackOps" deployment, which is when (hypothetically speaking) a feature currently in prototype or beta is deployed to production temporarily, perhaps under a special schema...

We have a PowerShell script that installs SQL Server using all of our internal best practices.
It will download and run the mssql setup executable for appropriate version and...