The most critical task for all DBAs is to have a Backup and Recovery strategy that ensures, every day, that in the event of a disaster they can restore and recover any database, within acceptable limits for data loss and downtime. Even with all the required backups in place, it's easy to miss subtle failings in the overall plan that can, and eventually will, defeat your recovery plans.
Now that we've seen the basics of indexing, and taken a deeper dive into Nonclustered Indexes, this Level will focus on searching the table, which will, in turn, will lead us to a discussion of clustered indexes.
This Friday Steve Jones takes a break from serious technical discussions. With the Oscar nominees announced there were lots of films left out of the awards. Are there some of these you'd recommend?
You can download a free eBook from SQLServerCentral and Red Gate software on the most important task a SQL Server DBA or developer needs to understand.
In February 2008, Microsoft announced a record-breaking data load using Microsoft® SQL Server® Integration Services (SSIS): 1 TB of data in less than 30 minutes. That data load, using SQL Server Integration Services, was 30% faster than the previous best time using a commercial ETL tool. This paper outlines what it took: the software, hardware, and configuration used. We will describe what we did to achieve that result, and offer suggestions for how to relate these techniques to typical scenarios. Even for customers who don't have needs quite like this benchmark, such efforts can teach a lot about getting optimal performance.
Today Steve Jones talks about the future of software development and how it might not require developers to know anything about servers.
A procedure that generates point in time restore database & log commands for your databases.
There are several different ways of restricting access to SSIS packages and confidential information they contain. However, preventing unauthorized users from running or viewing the content of your code is not the only security measure that you should take into consideration.
Why is it so hard to build better software? Steve Jones looks at recent problem in iOS that seems silly.
In this article, we'll tackle the topic of monitoring disk space usage. By tracking how much is in use and how much is still available, over time we'll have the data we need for better capacity planning, and can ensure that a database won't ever run out of disk space.
By Brian Kelley
I developed these rules a while back, before COVID. I had a period of...
By Steve Jones
Someone asked why I would use TRY_PARSE after I posted a question at SQL...
My mugI grew up surrounded by coffee farms in Guatemala and somehow spent most...
I have a table that ends in ON [PRIMARY] TEXTIMAGE_ON [PRIMARY]. I'm about to...
Comments posted to this topic are about the item OUTER APPLY Fundamentals: Part 2
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Building Great Software
I have this data in the OrderHeader table in a SQL Server 2025 database (ordered by CustomerID ASC):
orderid orderdate customerid complete 3 2025-05-10 00:00:00.0002 1 21 2024-01-10 00:00:00.0003 1 15 2023-10-28 00:00:00.0004 1 13 2025-03-08 00:00:00.0006 1 11 2024-04-02 00:00:00.0007 1If I run this query, how many rows are returned?
SELECT * from dbo.OrderHeader where customerid between 3 and '6'See possible answers