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.
Does the Job Matter To You?
How important is your job to you? Today's guest editorial from Andy Warren asks the question of the professionals out there, some of whom do great work, but don't care about their jobs.
1st New England Business Intelligence Code Camp
This is a major Business Intelligence community event for Developers and IT professionals that focus on building real-world BI solutions using the Microsoft Business Intelligence Platform tools and technology on May 22nd 2010! May 22 in Waltham, MA
Blogs
Future IT Roles – Agentic Architect and AI Boom!!
By Vinay Thakur
These days everything is changing to AI World, IT roles are getting changed and...
PlanTrace: Stop Reading Redshift EXPLAIN Plans. Start Seeing Them
PlanTrace: Stop Reading Redshift EXPLAIN Plans. Start Seeing Them Introducing PlanTrace — a free, browser-based...
A Cloud Dependency Failure from Amazon
By Steve Jones
I went to sleep while reading a Kindle book on my phone. I know...
Forums
SPAM Issues May 2026
We suffered a SPAM attack from May 1-6, which unfortunately corresponded with time off...
SQL Password enforcing
Hi to all We have situation at a client where someone is illegally changing...
SQL Password enforcing
Hi to all We have situation at a client where someone is illegally changing...
Question of the Day
Creating a JSON Document III
I have this data in a table called dbo.NFLTeams
TeamID TeamName City YearEstablished ------ -------- ---- --------------- 1 Cowboys Dallas 1960 2 Eagles Philadelphia 1933 3 Packers Green Bay 1919 4 Chiefs Kansas City 1960 5 49ers San Francisco 1946 6 Broncos Denver 1960 7 Seahawks Seattle 1976 8 Patriots New England 1960If I run this code, how many rows are returned?
SELECT TOP 2
json_objectagg('Team' : TeamName)
FROM dbo.NFLTeams;
See possible answers