SQLServerCentral Editorial

Performance Data

Great DBAs collect all kinds of metrics on their instances and let them manage themselves. However many administrators need help monitoring and interpreting the data. Today Steve Jones asks if you think this data needs extra security or is it less of an issue than other PII data.

Technical Article

Data Generator Source Adapter

This component needs little explanation. It generates random integer (DT_I4) and string (DT_WSTR) data and places them in the pipeline. You specify how many columns of each you would like and for any string columns you pass a fixed length value. You then need to specify how many rows in total you require to be generated. This component is used by us to do testing of the pipeline and components downstream.

Blogs

Automated SQL Server Benchmarking with HammerDB and Docker: A Complete Testing Framework

By

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

By

One of my favourite features of SQL Server 2022 was the T-SQL Snapshot Backups....

The Book of Redgate: Hours

By

I have said and written this many times: Redgate Software is the type of...

Read the latest Blogs

Forums

ORDER BY alias

By aniap

Comments posted to this topic are about the item ORDER BY alias

Optional Parameter Plan Optimization in SQL Server 2025: Fixing the Kitchen-Sink Search Procedure

By vgupta

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Optional Parameter Plan Optimization in...

AI Experience Gap that we keep talking about

By Pat Wright

Comments posted to this topic are about the item AI Experience Gap that we...

Visit the forum

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) + 1
Which of the following queries produces the expected ordering and why? (Select all correct)

See possible answers