The Desire for Control
This Friday Steve Jones asks you if you want more knobs for SQL Server or less? It's a debate that balances the need for the DBA to know more with the resources Microsoft spends to build better tuning into the product.
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.
Setting up linked servers with an out-of-process OLEDB provider
There is an inprocess setting for linked servers. Have you ever used it? Gianluca Sartori gives a look at what the implications are for this.
Support for 15,000 Partitions in SQL Server 2008 SP2 and SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1
In SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 R2, the number of partitions on tables and indexes is limited to 1,000. This paper discusses how SQL Server 2008 SP2 and SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 address this limitation by providing an option to increase the limit to 15,000 partitions. It describes how support for 15,000 partitions can be enabled and disabled on a database. It also talks about performance characteristics, certain limitations associated with this support, known issues, and their workarounds. This support is targeted to enterprise customers and ISVs with large-scale decision support or data warehouse requirements.
REAL PRACTICES: Performance Scaling Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services at Microsoft adCenter
This white paper explains how Microsoft® adCenter implemented a Microsoft SQL Server® 2008 Analysis Services Scalable Shared Database on EMC® Symmetrix VMAX™ storage. Leveraging TimeFinder® clones and Enterprise Flash Drives with the read-only feature of SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services allowed adCenter to dramatically scale out OLAP while maintaining SLAs and decreasing system outages.
SQL Saturday - #75 - Columbus
A free one day training event in Columbus, OH on Jun 11, 2011. Come join us and learn about SQL Server.
Economics
Today we have an editorial from Mar 22, 2006 as Steve is on vacation. Today Steve Jones notes that economics might determine how you are paid, but human nature describes how you behave.
Raw Materials - Childish Games
Digitization transforms yet another of our most cherished traditions.
Why System Account is a bad idea for SQL Server Service Account
I'm trying to set up SQL Server and I know that I'm not supposed to use an account that's an administrator on the system, as per best practices. I see that the System account is a possibility, but I've been advised not to use it. Why not? Check out this tip to learn more.
Blogs
Flyway Tips: AI Generating Migration Script Names
By Steve Jones
AI is a big deal in 2026, and at Redgate, we’re experimenting with how...
The Book of Redgate: Get the right stuff done
By Steve Jones
Another of our values: The facing page has this quote: “We admire people who...
Runing tSQLt Tests with Claude
By Ed Elliott
Running tSQLt unit tests is great from Visual Studio but my development workflow...
Forums
No Defaults Passwords Ever
Comments posted to this topic are about the item No Defaults Passwords Ever
Introduction of OPTIMIZE_FOR_SEQUENTIAL_KEY = ON
Hi, We have low latency high volume system. I have a table having 3...
The Long Name
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Long Name
Question of the Day
The Long Name
I run this code to create a table:
When I check the length, I get these results:
A table name is limited to 128 characters. How does this work?