Logging – Level 11 of the Stairway to Integration Services
Learn how you can add custom logging to your Integration Services packages in this installment of our Stairway to Integration Services.
Handling Backups for Rapid Resilience
The backup and restore system in SQL Server hasn't changed a great deal over the years despite a huge growth in the typical size of databases. When disaster strikes, and an important service is taken offline while a restore is performed, there is often time to reflect on whether it might be possible to design databases for a more rapid recovery of the most critical parts of a database application.
Departures from Origins and Arrivals at Destinations
A suggested design for creating flight schedules makes querying easy. Includes basic airport and airlines data. Get started now with this tricky query problem.
Test Your Restores
Part of an effective response to a disaster situation is practice and testing of your skills and procedures. Steve Jones reminds us this is important today.
SQL Server Backup Questions We Were Too Shy to Ask
During presentations about doing database backups and restores, there seem to be two two types of questions that are commonly asked, Those that come from the floor during the presentation, and those that are asked in private afterwards. These are sometimes more interesting, and challenging to answer well.
Data Distribution with SQL Server Replication
This paper provides a foundation for understanding data replication as well as a discussion of the criteria for selecting an appropriate replication technology.
Grace Under Pressure
When a disaster strikes, how will you respond? Will you not only successfully recover, but will you do so with professionalism and grace under pressure? Steve Jones tells you how you can.
What Counts for a DBA: Being Replaceable
Louis Davidson describes why all DBAs should strive to be replaceable, and what that really means.
What’s in YOUR Recovery Plan?
Author Craig Outcalt gives advice on preparing for the worst with a look at what you should consider putting in your disaster recovery plan and why.
Disaster Recovery Planning for Data: The Cribsheet
Planning for disaster recovery and business continuity aren't amongst the most exciting IT activities. They are, however, essential and relevant to any Database Administrator who is responsible for the safety and integrity of the companies' data, since data is a key part of business continuity.
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
Server-Level Table sizes
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Server-Level Table sizes
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...
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