Indexes, Indexes, Indexes
This article has a description of an index utilization tool that Ron Johnson uses to analyze the effectiveness and use of indexes in a system.
TSQL Challenge 81 - Create a Game schedule generator in TSQL
This challenge is to generate a game scheduler based on the Teams given in a table.
Fix Failures Fast
A new study from Microsoft Research looks at failures in PCs. Steve Jones thinks there are a few things worth talking about for DBAs.
Generating Non-uniform Random Numbers with SQL
Some FUNCTIONs to help generate non-uniform random numbers from uniform random numbers including Normal, Multinomial, etc.
Email Job Failures Report to DBA using PowerShell
MySQL introduced its own brand of job scheduling, called Events, in version 5.1. However, some Database Administrators (DBAs) feel that it isn't quite ready for prime time. This article presents a hybrid solution that uses MySQL Event Scheduling to manage the batch jobs and Windows PowerShell for the error handling.
Security and Honesty
Today Steve Jones talks security and the need for us to share information about issues, especially those that impact security.
Using a PowerShell Script to delete old files for SQL Server
Many clients are using custom stored procedures or third party tools to backup databases in production environments instead of using database maintenance plans. One of the things that you need to do is to maintain the number of backup files that exist on disk, so you don't run out of disk space. There are several techniques for deleting old files, but in this tip I show how this can be done using PowerShell.
Blogs
Excellent article on securing msdb
By Brian Kelley
Fabiano Amorim has written an excellent article at Simple Talk on securing msdb. Here's...
T-SQL Tuesday #201: Temp Tables
By Steve Jones
This month we have a new host, which I am grateful for. So many...
When Do You Reach For A #temp Table?
I needed to do some research because there is more to #temp tables than...
Forums
OUTER APPLY Fundamentals: Part 2
Comments posted to this topic are about the item OUTER APPLY Fundamentals: Part 2
Building Great Software
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Building Great Software
The Range of Customers
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Range of Customers
Question of the Day
The Range of Customers
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