What Is Good Database Design?
Find out how good database design is essential to ensure data accuracy, consistency, and integrity and that databases are efficient, reliable, and easy to use.
Stairway to SQL Server Automated Database Testing Level 1: Why You Need TDD
The first article in this Stairway Series makes the case for test-driven development.
Integrating Python with MongoDB
This article gives an overview of MongoDB and outlines steps to integrate python with MongoDB
The SQL Developer Experience: Beyond RDBMS
Microsoft has built an amazing platform with Azure SQL Database and has recently announced an offer to use this for free. Read about the capabilities and options with this cloud database platform.
You Always Have a Software Pipeline
If you build software for customers, you have a pipeline. It might not be good, but you have one. Steve recommends you work to make sure this is a repeatable, reliable pipeline.
Modern Development
In some ways, development tasks haven't changed much in decades, but in others the way we build software has changed a lot, especially with regards to data.
Parsing a Pairs of Values in a String While Preserving Order
Learn how you can parse a series of parameters that are passed in a string of tuples, meaning pairs, of values and preserve order without using STRING_SPLIT with the ordinal parameter.
Stairway to Columnstore Indexes Level 12: Clustered or Nonclustered?
The previous levels of this stairway describe details, features, and limitations of columnstore indexes in SQL Server. But they do not answer what should be the first question for every database professional: should columnstore indexes be used in my databases; on what tables should they be used; and should they be clustered or nonclustered columnstore indexes?
Blogs
Learning from Mistakes: T-SQL Tuesday #194
By Steve Jones
We’re a week late, once again my fault. I was still coming out of...
Stupid Things I Did With AI: ASCII Art
By Steve Jones
I ran across this article recently (https://www.gatesnotes.com/meet-bill/source-code/reader/microsoft-original-source-code) and it has a great opening piece...
Simple Talks Podcasting in 2026
By Steve Jones
I’m in the UK today, having arrived this morning in London. Hopefully, by this...
Forums
Learning From Breakage
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Python in Action to Auto-Generate an Optimized PostgreSQL Index Strategy
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Python in Action to Auto-Generate...
Adding and Dropping Columns I
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Adding and Dropping Columns I
Question of the Day
Adding and Dropping Columns I
I have this table in my SQL Server 2022 database:
CREATE TABLE [dbo].[CityList] ( [CityNameID] [int] NOT NULL IDENTITY(1, 1), [CityName] [varchar] (30) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS NULL ) ON [PRIMARY] GOI decide to add two new columns for the StateProvince and Country. What code should I use? See possible answers