Technical Article

3 SQL Join Concepts to Help You Choose the Right Join

What do SQL joins and the "teach a man to fish" Chinese proverb have in common? SQL joins, like regular expressions, are one of those commonplace programming tasks in which true success is entirely dependent upon your ability to conceptualize the outcome. Fail to do so and you'll likely wind up spending a few hours in a frustrating round of trial and error. Like regular expressions, the proliferation of online examples has actually contributed to the frustration, providing the equivalent of a day's worth of fish rather than the proverbial fishing pool.

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Working with the XML Data Type in SQL Server

The XML data type, introduced in SQL Server 2005, is a powerful construct. When used wisely, it can provide useful extensions to SQL Server. Robert Sheldon, in the first part of a series, describes how create and index a XML column in a table, and discusses when you should consider using an XML data type.

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Fast Migrations

Virtualization is an important technology for anyone working with servers, and as vendors look to improve the performance of their hypervisors, this technology might be more important for data professionals to understand.

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Question of the Day

Detecting Deadlocks Quickly

In the Database Engine, when a deadlock is detected, what does the detection interval shrink to (in time)?

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