Halfway Through 2011
Steve Jones stops halfway through the year to look over the things that he ought to be doing to better manage systems as a DBA and reminds you to do the same.
Lesson #6: What CIOs really care about
This editorial was originally published on Dec 30, 2005. Steve is traveling to the UK this week and we are reprinting editorials.
TSQL Challenge 60 - Generate a relational tree structure from a string
Your job is to read a string containing product hierarchy information and generate a relational table (result set) representing the hierarchy of categories.
Free ebook: SQL Server Execution Plans
This free book is brought to you by Red Gate Software and Simple Talk Publishing. Why my query is running slow? Why isn't my index getting used? In order to answer these questions, you have to ask the same return question in each case: have you looked at the execution plan? Grant Fritchey provides the only dedicated and detailed guide to this essential topic.
Monitor SQL Server Replication Jobs
The Replication infrastructure in SQL Server is implemented using SQL Server Agent to execute the various components involved in the form of a job (e.g. LogReader agent job, Distribution agent job, Merge agent job) SQL Server jobs execute a binary executable file which is basically C++ code.
Self-aware Instances
For this Friday's poll, Steve Jones talks about a fundamental architectural decision for your software. Do you want central control or a series of distributed processes, each one self-aware, and able to act on its own.
SQL Overview SSIS Package II - Retrieving SQL Error Log
In Part II of his series on monitoring SQL Servers, David Bird takes a look at importing data from your error logs.
How to develop TSQL Code
The basic texts for developing SQL code tend to leave unsaid the basic techniques for building routines such as stored procedures in TSQL. Phil Factor is well-known for his more lengthy and complex stored procedures, so we asked him to explain in more detail how he goes about developing things without the comfort of Visual Studio.
Measurements
"If you cannot measure something, you cannot improve it." - Lord Kelvin. That quote and a blog about it inspired today's editorial.
Blogs
Monday Monitor Tips: Intelligent Alert Thresholds
By Steve Jones
At the recent Redgate Summit in Chicago, I demo’d (lightly) the ML based Alert...
A New Word: los vidados
By Steve Jones
los vidados – n. the half-remembered acquaintances you knew years ago, who you might...
In-Person CISA Training – April 13-16, 2026
By Brian Kelley
I will be leading an in-person Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) exam prep class...
Forums
String_agg not working as needed
I'm trying to get this string_agg to put all the 'comments' into one result...
Vectors in SQL Server 2025
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Vectors in SQL Server 2025
Odd Sequences
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Odd Sequences
Question of the Day
Odd Sequences
What values are returned from this code?
CREATE SEQUENCE NumericSequence
AS NUMERIC(5,1)
START WITH 1.0
INCREMENT BY 0.1;
GO
SELECT NEXT VALUE FOR NumericSequence
GO
SELECT NEXT VALUE FOR NumericSequence
GO See possible answers