Really? You're using it? Any words of wisdom on either living with it well or avoiding it entirely?

Nah, go take it. If it's really a question & answer type of test, you'll probably pass. It's likely to be one of those filters that HR puts in place...

Richlion (6/30/2008)

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As to clustered indexes I myself have been working with a large company since 1994 in different places and even countries, I have seen quite a dozen+ types off...

In addition to that list of links, which is pretty good, I'd just say to get very familiar with Profiler. One of the best books you can get is "Inside...

Hey guys,

You think you have problems now? Wait until nHibernate and all it's ilk are in your development systems. Now you'll have object specific databases with dynamic SQL. Tuning headaches...

It's probably parameter sniffing. As everyone else has already said, get the execution plans and see what the differences are.

I even had a guy go off on a huge lecture that we were asking too many SQL Server specific questions (for a SQL Server specific position) because we should...

Hey guys,

I've been out of town. Thanks for keeping the conversation going. Especially since you've been supplying answers much better than the ones I would have supplied.

Yeah, I have to agree. A blanket statement like that is not good.

Yes, you want to analyze the trace. A standard trace, using the defaults, will capture the execution time, I/O and CPU costs. That's what you need to look at. It's...

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

I do the technical interviews for our team. We go through about 20-30 phone screens in order to find someone worth bringing in for an interview....

One thing not mentioned is the use of copy & paste. We have a project that's actually, honestly, a little complex. In one place, we found we needed a query...

Jeff Moden (6/24/2008)

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And, THAT is why I tell folks...

Convert the NOT IN statement to a LEFT JOIN and only select values where the key from the second table are NOT NULL. That's much more likely to make good...

You have to issue a USE statement or quantify the object names in the queries with the database name. Neither method supports using a parameter which is why all you'll...