Working with Spatial Data Part IV - Developing a Geospatial Dashboard (GIS)
In Part IV of the Geo-Spatial series, an interactive dashboard is developed to present and interact with the data.
Query-generated Column Expressions
A technique from Bill Nicolich that allows you to target columns by data type for the same custom expression and easily build complex queries.
The Death March
Are you working too hard? Is it worth it? Steve Jones says that it is not and that you should push back.
Showplan Operator of the Week – BookMark/Key Lookup
Fabiano continues in his mission to describe the major Showplan Operators used by SQL Server's Query Optimiser. This week he meets a star, the Key Lookup, a stalwart performer, but most famous for its role in ill-performing queries where an index does not 'cover' the data required to execute the query. If you understand why, and in what circumstances, key lookups are slow, it helps greatly with optimising query performance.
A Smarter Planet
IBM has this tagline about a smarter planet and has a great video about the Internet of Things. Steve Jones looks at some of the issues we might have in actually using all this data.
Clustered Indexes? Sedimentary, my dear Watson
There is much sound advice suggesting that every table should have a clustered index, and that narrow, integer, ever-increasing columns, such as afforded by an IDENTITY column are the best choice. But is the sedimentary approach really the natural order of the day?
Optimising Server-Side Paging - Part II
The second part of this series compares four methods of obtaining the total number of rows in a paged data set.
Analyzing I/O Characteristics and Sizing Storage Systems for SQL Server Database Applications
Understanding how to analyze the characteristics of I/O patterns in the Microsoft® SQL Server® data management software and how they relate to a physical storage configuration is useful in determining deployment requirements for any given workload. A well-performing I/O subsystem is a critical component of any SQL Server application. I/O subsystems should be sized in the same manner as other hardware components such as memory and CPU. As workloads increase it is common to increase the number of CPUs and increase the amount of memory. Increasing disk resources is often necessary to achieve the right performance, even if there is already enough capacity to hold the data.
Where a Rose is not a rose…
Just because mistakes have become entrenched in the computer languages that we use doesn't mean we have to tolerate them
The Rise of NoSQL Databases
The NoSQL concept has been attracting a lot of attention in recent years, primarily due to big-name production implementations.
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