Being Careful with Power
It's good to be careful with your power consumption, especially as the power cost of computing continues to grow. However with your SQL Server, you don't want to be too careful, as Steve Jones notes.
Clouds Are In our Future
Today we have a guest editorial from Andy Warren looking at the future of cloud computing and SQL Server.
How to check SQL Server Authentication Mode using T-SQL and SSMS
Many times developers want to put logic into their code or SSIS/DTS package to check the SQL Server authentication mode. How can this be done programmatically?
SQL Server Workload Types and Hardware Selection
There are two primary relational workload types that SQL Server commonly has to deal with, the first being Online Transaction...
Enjoying the New Year
For the last Friday poll of the year, Steve Jones has a fun one. Add your input and give everyone an idea of how to spend the last part of this holiday season.
Generating SQL Server Test Data with Visual Studio 2010
As a database developer or tester sometimes you need to have production like data in your environment for your development or testing, but you cannot have the production data because of security and privacy issues. So how you can generate test data or replicate similar data as in production for your development or test environment?
Getting a Dedicated Admin Connection
Did you know you can easily get a Dedicated Admin Connection (DAC) in SSMS? I didn’t assuming that I’d need...
The Year of the Community
Steve Jones looks back at 2010 and dubs it the year of the community. Join him for a look back at some events in the SQL Server world from 2010.
Improving 2D Range Query Performance in SQL Server
When using the BETWEEN operator on multiple columns, you are likely using a 2D range query. Such queries perform very poorly in SQL Server. This article examines rewriting these queries for improved performance.
PBM and PowerShell
The best new management feature added to SQL Server 2008 is Policy Based Management or PBM. PBM allows DBAs to...
Blogs
Advice I Like: Pyramid Schemes
By Steve Jones
If someone is trying to convince you it’s not a pyramid scheme, it’s a...
Using Prompt AI for a Travel Data Analysis
By Steve Jones
I was looking back at my year and decided to see if SQL Prompt...
FinOps for Kubernetes: Leveraging OpenCost, KubeGreen, and Kubecost for Cost Efficiency
In the era of cloud-native applications, Kubernetes has become the default standard platform for...
Forums
Database file shrink issue.
Hi experts, I have a 3+ TB database on a 2019 sql server which...
The North Star for the Year
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The North Star for the...
Multiple Escape Characters
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Multiple Escape Characters
Question of the Day
Multiple Escape Characters
In SQL Server 2025, I run this code (in a database with the appropriate collation):
SELECT UNISTR('%*3041%*308A%*304C%*3068 and good night', '%*') AS 'A Classic';
What is returned? See possible answers