On which version did you run your test? On SQL 2014 SP2 Dev. the query will only return one row (and I stumbled over a few scripts which failed, since...

Another question.
If I understood it correct, it has to read all segments / pages for the city column, when I execute a SELECT COUNT(*) from customers...

Thank you very much for the quick answer. I always wondered, how exactly SQL Server does this stuff and your article (plus the answer) makes it a lot more clear...

any idea, if (and if yes then how) small datatypes as TINYINT (= 1 byte) could be compressed in columnstored indexes?

Its clear, that I will save space...

You should use an INLINE TABLE VALUE fuction instead of a scalar function - this would save a lot of time when you import many datasets

CREATE...

Short remark: a FILLFACTOR = 90 on a Identity Column (= auto increment) in a read-only-table (at least no space-growing varchars) makes no sense and wastes 10 % space. Even...

oh, thanks (I usually use only the deep links in the newsletters and visit the SSC start page only very seldom ...

Why do you not use a much more short and simple

DECLARE @bd DATE = '19801231', @td DATE = '20171231'
SELECT DATEDIFF(YEAR, @bd, @td) - CASE WHEN...

beside the "default" (at least before SQL 2016) Trace Flags 1117 / 1118 (Grow all Files in a FileGroup equally / prevent mixted extends) I'm using:
1222 (allows Deadlock monitoring),...

Nice to know, how to install / configure it, but I still do not know, if and how this will work, when a server crash and has to fail over...

Your code, where you select for definition like '%' +  @ValueToFind + '%' is wrong, since it would return references to MyDB10 and MyDB1_test  and dev_MyDB10 when @ValueToFind is 'MyDB1'.

This is not true.
I just used
DBCC SHRINKFILE (N'mydb_log' , 0, TRUNCATEONLY)
on my 4 GB log file and it is now down to 10 MB (10...