Zettabytes and Beyond
The growth of data, and the sheer scale of data we store and manage is stunning. Steve Jones looks at the rates of growth these days.
Query Tuning, Encryption, and more at SQL Intersection
Grant Fritchey is speaking about query tuning, Steve Jones talking about Encryption, Paul Randal telling you how to make SQL Server faster. All at SQL Intersection. Join us in April.
Using Optimizer_WhatIF and StatsStream to Simulate a Production Environment
SQL Server's Query optimiser judges the best query plan from the data in the relevant tables and the server's hardware. How, then, can you investigate the query plans being generated for slow-running queries on a customer's production server when you can neither access the server, nor recreate the database from a backup?
Populating a Vertically Filtered Replicated Table
Vertical filtering of a large replicated table introduces the potential for unwanted transactions to be pushed to the subscriber. This article talks about how you might avoid this.
Stop, Smell, Smile
On this quiet Friday, Steve Jones skips a poll and talks about life. This editorial was originally published on Jun 6, 2008. It is being republished as Steve is on vacation.
The Power of the SQL Server Database Owner
I have a couple of databases supporting applications. The first application requires that it's user be a member of the db_owner role. The second application actually has to own the database. What are the effects of having such permissions? Check out this tip to learn more.
Serious Storage
Steve Jones talks about the serious storage that EMC is bringing to the Vatican library.
Accounting for Windows Azure
On Thursday March 21st 12PM noon Central, Steve Hughes will discuss Accounting for Windows Azure when looking at Data Architecture.
Full Text Searches on Documents in FileTables
SQL Server's FileTable technology is an intriguing way of accomodating file-based text data in a database, and allowing for complex searches. The best way of learning FileTable is to try it out and experiment. Feodor shows how to set it up, add some sample data and set up full-text search.
Algorithm Secrecy is not Security
This week Steve Jones talks encryption and why you shouldn't be implementing anything you've invented.
Blogs
A Last Minute Trip to the EU
By Steve Jones
My life has some crazy travel stretches for sure. Between speaking, office visits, customer...
Part 3 of 3: Tuning DiskANN — R, Alpha, L, Beam Width, Recall and Latency
In Part 1, we saw how ‘Vamana’ represents vectors as nodes, connects them with...
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...
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