Monitoring is Essential
One of the keys to better availability, scalability, and performance on your systems is understanding what is happening in the instances. That requires monitoring, which Steve Jones sees as essential.
The Art of SQL Server FILESTREAM by Jacob Sebastian and Sven Aelterman
FILESTREAM is implemented as an extension to the VARBINARY(MAX) data type and allows large object data to be stored in a special folder on the NTFS file system, while bringing that data under the transactional control of SQL Server. This book describes both the way it works and the implementation, administration and troubleshooting of it.
The Data We Give Away
We're all used to storing and protecting data, but how often to we consider the data we're generating every day?
Viewing VMware Counters in PerfMon for SQL Server
I want to ensure that my SQL Server on a VMware Guest OS is getting the resources it should. This would go a long way towards helping isolate the performance problems we're experiencing. However, our system administrators won't give us access to VirtualCenter or any of the tools they use. Is there anything I can do? Check out this tip to learn more.
Reading SQL Server's Transaction Log
This article shows how you can read the [RowLog Contents] in the Transaction Log, for Real!
What Do You Want from SQL in the City?
After the SQL in the City tour wrapped up this week in Seattle, Steve Jones looks back and asks a question. What type of training would be best for you.
Script to create dynamic PIVOT queries in SQL Server
Pivoting is a common reporting requirement - data is stored in columns and you need to present it in rows. This was a nice feature that was added to SQL Server, but you don't always know all of the values you need to pivot on. This tip looks at how you can dynamically create the pivot command to handle these unknown values.
Blogs
“We love to debate minutiae”
By Brian Kelley
I am guilty as charged. The quote was in reference to how people argue...
Advice I Like: Knots
By Steve Jones
Learn how to tie a bowline knot. Practice in the dark. With one hand....
Shifting Mindsets: Why FinOps is Essential for Cloud Efficiency
By HeyMo0sh
As a DevOps practitioner, I’ve always focused on performance, scalability, and automation. But as...
Forums
Windows logins for users migrated from DomainA to DomainB
Hi, I have a SQL Server instance where users connect to via Windows Authentication,...
Multiple Deployment Processes
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Multiple Deployment Processes
How to Use sqlpackage to Detect Schema Drift Between Azure SQL Databases
Comments posted to this topic are about the item How to Use sqlpackage to...
Question of the Day
Upgrading Admin Queries
I have a query from a former DBA that we run on SQL Server 2025 to check on database metadata. This query references sys.sysaltfiles. I want to refactor this code to be more modern. Which DMV should I reference instead?
See possible answers