Coincidence or Causality
Steve Jones looks at query optimization, and based on some blogging from Microsoft, the level of impact that you can have on a system.
Convert String to a Table using CTE
Explains how to convert a list of Ids passed as string and convert it to a table
PowerPivot
A new direction in BI, with a new flagship interface for Business Intelligence from Microsoft. Steve Jones talks a little about the back story he heard from Microsoft.
PowerPivot
A new direction in BI, with a new flagship interface for Business Intelligence from Microsoft. Steve Jones talks a little about the back story he heard from Microsoft.
PowerPivot
A new direction in BI, with a new flagship interface for Business Intelligence from Microsoft. Steve Jones talks a little about the back story he heard from Microsoft.
PowerPivot
A new direction in BI, with a new flagship interface for Business Intelligence from Microsoft. Steve Jones talks a little about the back story he heard from Microsoft.
SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) - Design Best Practices
In the previous tips (SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) - Best Practices - Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3) of this series I briefly talked about SSIS and few of the best practices to consider while designing SSIS packages. Continuing on this path I am going to discuss some more best practices of SSIS package design, how you can use lookup transformations and what considerations you need to take, the impact of implicit type cast in SSIS, changes in SSIS 2008 internal system tables and stored procedures and finally some general guidelines.
TSQL Challenge 19 - Working with consolidated calculations on hierarchical structures
This challenge involves generating an organizational hierarchy and calculating the total orders created by each employee and his/her subordinates. It involves a number of challenges such as generating a resultset in the correct hierarchical form, calculating the orders created by each employee and his/her subordinates and finally calculating the total orders created by self and all the subordinates.
What SQL Statements Are Currently Executing?
This article describes a utility that allows you to identify what SQL statements are currently executing.
Comparing cursor vs. WHILE loop performance in SQL Server 2008
There are situations in which you need to individually handle each row in a result set. SQL Server 2008 provides a minimal set of tools — cursors and WHILE loops — to accomplish this task. I'll take a closer look at each option and explain why it's difficult to pinpoint which is better in terms of performance.
Blogs
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...
Local Models Using GPUs with Ollama
By Steve Jones
Can you use your GPUs when running a local model under Ollama? You can,...
Forums
Checking the Error Log II
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Parameter Sniffing on SQL Server 2025: A Walkthrough with Real Numbers
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Designing for Teams
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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