Is Unit Testing Important?
Testing our applications is important, but at what level do we need to test? Steve Jones talks about unit testing today, and wonders if this is prevalent for SQL Server developers.
Writing Custom Rules for FxCop
FxCop is a useful tool for analyzing code to highlight potential issues and deviations from best practise. To fully utilize to power of FxCop, custom rules can be added to the inbuilt rules that ship with FxCop.
#SQLPASS on Twitter
With the PASS Summit taking place last week in Seattle, Steve Jones found that there was a tremendous amount of SQL Server news and information on Twitter. It's a medium that is becoming useful for SQL DBAs.
A Bad Litmus Test
A litmus test is a way of determining your answer to a question based on a single issue or response. Steve Jones sees this as a bad idea, especially when looking to hire technical people.
An Un-indexed Foreign Key Gotcha
Indexing is important for improving performance, but do you know that a lack of indexes might actually cause things to stop working? Alok Dwivedi brings us a very interesting scenario where the lack of an index causes a problem with concurrency.
A Bad Litmus Test
A litmus test is a way of determining your answer to a question based on a single issue or response. Steve Jones sees this as a bad idea, especially when looking to hire technical people.
A Bad Litmus Test
A litmus test is a way of determining your answer to a question based on a single issue or response. Steve Jones sees this as a bad idea, especially when looking to hire technical people.
A Bad Litmus Test
A litmus test is a way of determining your answer to a question based on a single issue or response. Steve Jones sees this as a bad idea, especially when looking to hire technical people.
What a Data Warehouse is Not
Recently, I was at a conference, and I heard the following discussion about what a data warehouse was. One person suggested that a data warehouse was really all the old legacy systems connected by software that could access the data. By calling such a contraption a data warehouse, the organization could avoid having to do the hard and complex work of integration. There are so many problems with this federated approach to a data warehouse that they are almost not worth repeating here. But (once again!) here goes.
Introduction to the Transaction Log
The transaction log is a fairly complex construct in SQL Server and present in every database installation. New author James Rea brings us a great introduction to how the log works and how to maintain it.
Blogs
SQL Server Security Hardening Guide Using the DoD STIG Checklist
Security on your SQL Server is important. That doesn’t need any explaining. But where...
EightKB 2026: Registration is Open!
It’s that time of year again! EightKB is back on August 20th at 13:00...
TRY_PARSE Limitations: #SQLNewBlogger
By Steve Jones
I got a notification from a question I’d posted at SQL Server Central: Getting...
Forums
Are You Working More Hours?
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Are You Working More Hours?
Stairway to Reliable Database Deployments Level 6 – Managing Changesets Over Time
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Stairway to Reliable Database Deployments...
A Limited Startup
Comments posted to this topic are about the item A Limited Startup
Question of the Day
A Limited Startup
I add this parameter to SQL Server 2025 in the Configuration Manager:
-mDynamicsWhat does this do? See possible answers