Overusing Identities
Do you put an identity column on every table? That might be a bad habit you want to kick, but not all at once. Steve Jones comments on this common data modeling practice.
Randomizing Result Sets with NEWID
Seth Delconte brings us a technique to solve a common request. Using the NEWID function to return a random record from a result set.
Reaching for the Clouds
This past week's news had a lot of news about cloud computing and Steve Jones comments on a few database related items.
IntelliSense Slow to Refresh
IntelliSense in SQL Server 2008 can sometimes not be very intelligent. It’s there to help you can sometimes cause more...
Mission Critical: SQL Server 2008 General Maintenance
This document contains steps that will assist you in the day-to-day SQL Server 2008 RTM Enterprise Edition (non-clustered) operations. It defines the basics of standard maintenance and checks for a single Instance of SQL Server 2008, and should be used as a starting point.
Using a Parent Child Hierarchy in SQL Server to Implement a Custom Security Scheme
I have a requirement to implement a custom security scheme where roles and the user's place in the organization hierarchy are used to determine which customers a user can access. In particular the requirements are that a sales person can only access their customers and any other role can access any customer in their level of the organization hierarchy and below. We have a simple hierarchy that is made up of regions and offices. Can you provide us with an example of how to do this?
Timing is Everything
For this Friday poll, Steve Jones asks about storing time values. Should they always be in UTC? Does that solve more problems than it creates?
Exceptional PowerShell DBA Pt 3 - Collation and Fragmentation
In this final look into his everyday essentials, Laerte Junior provides some useful scripts for the DBA that use an alternative way of error-logging. He shows how to use a PowerShell script to check and, if necessary, to defragment your indexes, write data to a SQL Server table, and change the collation for a table. Being an exceptional DBA just got a little easier.
Experiments with Data Compression in SQL Server 2008
Data compression is an Enterprise Edition only feature that was added in SQL Server 2008. It allows you to use...
SQLSaturday Acquired by PASS – Reactions
The Announcement
On February 2nd, PASS (@sqlpass), here, and Andy Warren (@sqlandy), here, announced ownership of the SQLSaturday franchise brand was transferred...
Blogs
Flyway Tips: Object History
By Steve Jones
It’s a small change, but a handy one. Flyway Desktop (FWD) now includes the...
Car Update September 2026
By Steve Jones
Software is hard. While I love our Lucid Gravity, I realize that they are...
Microsoft Tools for Making Data AI-Ready
By James Serra
Making Data AI-Ready, Part 2 (This is the second article in a three-part series...
Forums
Looking for old SQL Server 1.x - 4.21 disks, manuals, boxes, etc.
Hi everyone, I'm hoping some of the longtime SQL Server professionals here might be...
Checking the Error Log II
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Checking the Error Log II
Parameter Sniffing on SQL Server 2025: A Walkthrough with Real Numbers
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Parameter Sniffing on SQL Server...
Question of the Day
Checking the Error Log II
What is the reason I should change my old code that uses xp_readerrorlog?
See possible answers