Vendor Selection
Today's editorial was originally published on Apr 29, 2007. It is being re-run as Steve is at SQL Server Connections. Today Steve Jones talks about purchasing software.
Storing E-mail addresses more efficiently in SQL Server
A lot of people are storing large quantities of e-mail addresses in their systems. Since a large percentage of any system's user base is going to be supplying e-mail addresses from a few of the vastly popular providers (such as GMail and Hotmail), we are storing the "@gmail.com" and "@hotmail.com" parts of those addresses on disk over and over and over again.
Generating Test Data: Part 1 - Generating Random Integers and Floats
Learn how you can easily generate large amounts of test data efficiently in this new series from Jeff Moden. Part 1 covers integers and floating point values.
Make Meetings Fun
Today we have a guest editorial from Andy Warren as Steve Jones is at SQL Server Connections. Today Andy talks about how we can make those dreaded daily events, meetings, better.
The Clonesome Database
You need a quiet couple of hours poking about with DMVs, and checking execution plans to get to the bottom of the a query issue, but you can't make a copy the production database either. It's too big, and the data is private....
Using SQL Server's Output Clause
When you are inserting, updating, or deleting records from a table, SQL Server keeps track of the records that are changed in two different pseudo tables: INSERTED, and DELETED. These tables are normally used in DML triggers. If you use the OUTPUT clause on an INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE or MERGE statement you can expose the records that go to these pseudo tables to your application and/or T-SQL code.
Dealing with custom date formats in T-SQL
Should I be formatting dates on the database side? What tools can I use in SQL Server to format and parse dates? This article helps you decide which one best suits your needs.
The Maintenance Poll
This Friday Steve Jones asks about maintenance. Do you have regular windows? Flex time? Or is maintenance just added on whenever it is needed and added onto your work week.
Creating a Map Report in SSRS - SQL Server 2008 R2
SQL Server 2008 R2 brought several new features into the SSRS (SQL Server Reporting Services) arena. In the data visualization category, we now have three additional ways to display and visualize/analyze data in the reports.
A Demo of the Power of Powershell
This demo will show you the how powerfull is powershell. We will use cicles and the get-content command.
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