Avoiding Logging
It seems that some people think that you can perform actions in SQL Server without logging them in the transaction log. Steve Jones talks about this myth and says it's not even an option he'd like to have.
RedGate Source Control for SQL Server Webinar from Pluralsight
Join this webinar from Pluralsight, a very well known developer training company. Learn how SQL Source Control can help you keep track of your code.
Understanding and Using Parallelism in SQL Server
SQL Server is able to make implicit use of parallelism to speed SQL queries. Quite how it does it, and how you can be sure that it is doing so, isn't entirely obvious to most of us. Paul White begins a series that makes it all seem simple, starting at the gentle level of counting Jelly Beans.
Is Microsoft neglecting SMO?
Phil Fator, the self-confessed wild man of T-SQL, finally comes clean: he's a secret PowerShell user. But for the DBA, what is PowerShell without SMO? Is Microsoft giving the latter the care and attention it needs?
The Wisdom Department
Steve Jones talks about the way business ought to run, with more long term goals and objectives taking precedence over short term revenue. One idea that might help us is having a wisdom department that looks forward and tries to grow the business for the long term.
TSQL Challenge 51 - Convert long Binary strings to Decimal strings
This challenge invites you to write a query that converts binary values into decimal format.
Slow in the Application, Fast in SSMS? Understanding Performance Mysteries
When I read various forums about SQL Server, I frequently see questions from deeply mystified posters. They have identified a slow query or stored procedure in their application. They cull the SQL batch from the application and run it in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) to analyse it, only to find that the response is instantaneous. At this point they are inclined to think that SQL Server is all about magic. A similar mystery is when a developer has extracted a query in his stored procedure to run it stand-alone only to find that it runs much faster – or much slower – than inside the procedure.
Coding Standards Part 2 - Formatting
The second part of Steve Jones' series on coding standards within SQL Server.
Concatenating Rows
Often in database design we store different values in rows to take advantage of a normalized design. However many times we need to combine multiple rows of data into one row for a report of some sort. New author Carl P. Anderson brings us some interesting T-SQL code to accomplish this.
SLA Contracts
This Friday Steve Jones talks about the commitments and contracts that you may have with your customers. Do you know what they are? Is the contract explicitly spelled out? Take this Friday's poll and share your answer with everyone else.
Blogs
Advice I Like: Respect
By Steve Jones
“Don’t aim to have others like you; aim to have them respect you.” –...
Blue Sky Programming – The Optimism Trap
Many years ago, before I joined Oracle, I was working on a major modernisation...
Setting Up a Mac for Data Engineering and AI Work
If you work with data pipelines, SQL, notebooks, or machine learning models, a Mac...
Forums
SQL Art, Part 4: Happy 4th of July — A British DBA's Guide to Celebrating a War We Don't Talk About
Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Art, Part 4: Happy...
SQL Server Still Wins
Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Server Still Wins
DBCC CHECKDB Limits I
Comments posted to this topic are about the item DBCC CHECKDB Limits I
Question of the Day
DBCC CHECKDB Limits I
When running DBCC CHECKDB on SQL Server 2025, can I include the Resource Database?
See possible answers