Essential Software
For this Friday's poll, Steve Jones asks if there is a set of essential software that every DBA needs to have installed on their machine.
Retrieving Data from an Audit Table
This article examines the various methods for retrieving data from an Audit table.
SQL Server Intellisense VS. Red Gate SQL Prompt
Fabiano Amorim is hooked on today's Integrated Development Environments with built-in Intellisense, so he looked forward keenly to SQL Server 2008's native intellisense. He was disappointed at how it turned out, so turned instead to SQL Prompt. Fabiano explains why he prefers to SQL Prompt, why he reckons it fits in with the way that database developers work, and goes on to describe some of the features he'd like to see in it
Office Cleaning
A guest editorial from Andy Warren today looks at choices in time management, as well as work accomplished.
SQL Server 2008 Spatial Index Performance
The institution I work with has decided to migrate their database system to SQL Server 2008. One of the applications uses geospatial data, which consists of millions of rows. I understand that their are indexes that can be used for geospatial data, but have not worked with them. What's the scoop on them?
Date Manipulation with DATEADD/DATEDIFF
Learn how to use Dateadd/Datediff functions to manipulate dates in this short article from Seth Phelabaum.
Don’t Change Anything
Being responsible for data integrity as well as the cleaning of data can be a problem for an organization. Steve Jones reminds us today that we should be careful about changing the data we work with.
New and Improved Functionality in SSIS 2008
While it does not bring revolutionary changes, the release of SQL Server 2008 delivers functionality, scalability, and performance improvements to SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS). Here is a comprehensive listing of new and enhanced features of SSIS with a short description of each.
Understanding Dynamic Management Views and Functions in SQL Server 2008
Performance monitoring and optimization is an inseparable part of a DBA's activities. To optimize a poorly performing system/query or to troubleshoot the performance issues you need to know the root cause. Prior to SQL Server 2005, we had several system tables to monitor the state of the system.
Answering to the Business
As data professionals, or IT workers, we often have a lot of insight into how much our services cost and the options that are available. But many times the rest of the company does not. Steve Jones thinks we could be more transparent, and possibly help them to be more efficient.
Blogs
Upgrading SQL Server Containers on the Laptop
By Steve Jones
I don’t have SQL Server installed on my laptop. In an effort to keep...
How to Find Expensive Queries in Amazon Redshift
Slow-running queries can degrade your Redshift cluster’s performance and lead to increased costs. Identifying...
The Notification Trap: How Input Fatigue Is Killing Deep Work in Tech
By gbargsley
If you've been here before, you know this blog is usually about SQL Server,...
Forums
SQL 2019 instance with AG, across 2 Windows 2016 OS servers - OSin-place upgrade
Hi all Can I get some perspective from the community please on performing in-place...
How Long is a Long I/O?
Comments posted to this topic are about the item How Long is a Long...
T-SQL Trigonometric Functions in SQL Server
Comments posted to this topic are about the item T-SQL Trigonometric Functions in SQL...
Question of the Day
How Long is a Long I/O?
In SQL Server 2025, a long I/O is recorded in the error log with message 833. How long much an I/O request be outstanding before this message is written to the log?
See possible answers