Gathering Perfmon Data with Powershell
Inspired to streamline the process of gathering and storing data from Performance Monitor Counters, SQL Server MVP Laerte Junior guides us through the functions of his remarkably useful module.
Incompetent or Malicious
When someone else doesn't do a good job to prove a point, are they incompetent or malicious? Steve Jones comments.
Turn on CHECKSUM after an upgrade
When reloading or attaching a SQL 2000 database to SQL 2005 or 2008, the database objects are upgraded automatically. Some database options don't change, though. PAGE_VERIFY is one of them.
Binary Trees in SQL
A number of hierarchies and networks are most conveniently modelled as binary trees. So what is the best way of representing them in SQL? Joe Celko discards the Nested Set solution in favour of surprisingly efficient solution based on the Binary Heap
Backup Isn't Enough
When is backup not enough? Steve Jones talks about a few things that can cause you issues and a backup can't help you recover from.
Setting All Tempdb Data Files to the Same Size
How to set all tempdb datafiles to same size to meet best practice.
SQLRally
A new event is coming to the East Coast next year that will give people a chance to experience a SQL Server conference at a much lower cost.
Shared Datasets in SQL Server 2008 R2
Shared Datasets are one of the features introduced in SQL Server 2008 R2. This article demonstrates how to implement Shared Datasets as well their use-case scenarios.
ANSI PADDING, Trailing Whitespace, and Variable Character Columns
What does ANSI_PADDING mean and how does it affect my SQL Server database?
Collective Intelligence
Trying to keep up with all the learning going on in the SQL Community can be frustrating. Or is it? Give us your answer in this week's Friday poll.
Blogs
Presenting Twice in May 2026
By alevyinroc
I will be presenting my latest session, Documenting Your Work for Worry-Free Vacations, in-person...
Finding the Next Sequence Value: #SQLNewBlogger
By Steve Jones
I saw a question asking about the next sequence value and decided to try...
SQL Server Journey Part 2: Modern Era (2017 – 2026) – AI/Cloud First
By Vinay Thakur
Following up on my Part 1 baseline, the journey from 2017 onward changed how...
Forums
Auto Update Statistics not triggering on filtered indexes
I've got a table with 186,703,969 rows, about 300GB of data. There are several...
What is the difference between SQL Server and SQL Database?
I created a SQL Database in Azure Portal but I've just noticed it also...
An Unusual Identity
Comments posted to this topic are about the item An Unusual Identity
Question of the Day
An Unusual Identity
What values are returned when I run this code?
CREATE TABLE dbo.IdentityTest2
(
id NUMERIC(10,0) IDENTITY(10,10) PRIMARY KEY,
somevalue VARCHAR(20)
)
GO
INSERT dbo.IdentityTest2
(
somevalue
)
VALUES
( 'Steve')
, ('Bill')
GO
SELECT top 10
id
FROM dbo.IdentityTest2 See possible answers