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
Microsoft Build 2026 announcements
By James Serra
Once again there were a number of Microsoft Build announcements related to data and...
T-SQL Tuesday #199: Roundup
A good week ago I hosted the monthly T-SQL Tuesday blog party. I invited...
No Shortcuts for the SQLCMD Batch Terminator: #SQLNewBlogger
By Steve Jones
I was messing around with SQLCMD and I realized something I hadn’t known. I’ve...
Forums
Increment a number in a SQL Query based on a value
I have an issue where I have a Bill of Material list of items...
Follow Your Hunch
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Follow Your Hunch
What Happens When You Ask a Local AI to Query Your Database?
Comments posted to this topic are about the item What Happens When You Ask...
Question of the Day
Detecting Characters
I have a SQL Server 2022 English default installation on a server. I want to detect if there are any upper case characters in rows and I have this code:
SELECT CustomerNameID,
CustomerName
FROM dbo.CustomerName
WHERE CustomerName = LOWER(CustomerName)
Here is the sample data I am testing with:
CustomerNameID CustomerName 1 John Smith 2 Sarah Johnson 3 MICHAEL WILLIAMS 4 JENNIFER BROWN 5 david jones 6 emily davis 7 Robert Miller 8 LISA WILSON 9 christopher moore 10 Amanda TaylorHow many rows are returned? See possible answers