SQLServerCentral Best Practices Clinic: Part 1
We exposed the SQLServerCentral cluster for monitoring with SQL Monitor. Just like other companies, we have constraints on resources, and we have more work that needs to be done. Help us configure SQLServerCentral’s database servers with your suggestions on what is the highest priority for a website database back end.
Free ebook: Troubleshooting SQL Server: A Guide for the Accidental DBA
Merry Christmas from SQLServerCentral. We spend much of our working life helping solve SQL Server-related performance problems, hands-on, during consulting, or on online forums. We've seen a few weird-and-wonderful issues but, mainly, it’s the same problems and misconceptions time-and-again. This is our attempt to describe, diagnose, and solve the most common problems with SQL Server 2005, 2008, and 2008 R2. And it's free.
Can a Table Really Have a Clustered Index?
A table doesn't so much "have" a clustered index as a table "is" a clustered index.
DBAs Take Sixth Place
The hot jobs for 2013 are compiles and a number of tech jobs make the top 100. DBAs come in 6th and Steve Jones thinks that's good news for data professionals.
It's the Bits
A woman sues Best Buy for $54million. That's absurd, but her laptop is worth more than the hardware. This editorial was originally published on Mar 3, 2008. It is being re-run as Steve is traveling.
Making the Case for a SQL Server Platform Refresh
With the release of Windows Server 2012, SQL Server 2012, and the new generation of Sandy Bridge Xeon processors, your organization is likely to get many tangible benefits from upgrading your current database infrastructure with a complete platform refresh.
Rudolph The Red-Nosed Tester and Other Festive Arrangements
A Christmas poem and a contest from Simple Talk.
Some tips for working with big data models
The main goal of this article is to present some tips to help professionals that need to work with complex, big, and hard to understand database models that anyone may came across some day.
Blogs
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...
T-SQL Snapshot Backups on Availability Group Secondary Replicas
One of my favourite features of SQL Server 2022 was the T-SQL Snapshot Backups....
The Book of Redgate: Hours
By Steve Jones
I have said and written this many times: Redgate Software is the type of...
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