The Security of Old Tech
Older technology can introduce security issues, along with performance ones. Keeping your systems somewhat up to date is important for security.
How to Increase SQL Server Column Width Without IO (Input/Output) Overhead
This article dives into a fun (and interesting!) strategy for widening fixed-width columns in SQL Server, to reduce downtime, risk, and runtime at the time when a column’s data type needs to be changed.
Password Guidance
Passwords are essential and also a problem in many organizations. Guidance has changed over the years and Steve has a few thoughts on what's recommended today.
Stairway to Transaction Log Management in SQL Server, Level 9: Monitoring the Transaction Log
Our major goal in terms of log maintenance for all databases under our care is to optimize for write performance, in order to support all activities that require SQL Server to write to the log, including data modifications, data loads, index rebuilds, and so on. However, it's also important to keep an eye on possible log fragmentation, which, as described previously, can affect the performance of processes that need to read the log, such as log backups and the crash recovery process.
A Rolling Filtered Index in SQL Server
I recently resolved an issue where a query pulling data from the last 30 days would time out due to the table’s size and the lack of a supporting index. Creating a supporting index is possible, but not ideal; it will be very large and may not be useful for most queries and use cases. I wonder how I could implement a filtered index that follows time and is always limited to the last n days.
Requiring Technical Debt Payments
Steve found someone using an interesting approach to get developers to address some technical debt.
Using the FP-Growth Algorithm to Mine Useful Patterns in Data
This article looks at using the FP-Growth algorithm from Python to mine data in SQL Server.
How to Use the New PRODUCT() Function in SQL Server 2025
Introduced in SQL Server 2025 CTP 1.3, the PRODUCT() function acts similarly to SUM(), but multiplies values rather than adds them. It is an aggregate function in SQL Server and therefore operates on a data set, rather than on scalar values.
Guidelines and Requirements
We have some requirements that we meet a particular setting or value, but often we have guidelines and recommendations. Do you know the difference?
Blogs
SQL Training Black Friday Deals
By Brian Kelley
If you're looking for particular "Black Friday" deals, here is what I've seen advertised...
Dry-run xp_delete_file Before Actually Deleting Files?
By SQLPals
Dry-run xp_delete_file Before Actually Deleting Files? xp_delete_file doesn’t really have a...
Happy Thanksgiving! (USA Holiday)
By Brian Kelley
In the United States, today is Thanksgiving. The intent behind the holiday is to...
Forums
Don't Let Corner Cases Drive Your Design
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Don't Let Corner Cases Drive...
A New Operator
Comments posted to this topic are about the item A New Operator
Troubleshooting Common SQL Server Errors: 823, and 824
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Troubleshooting Common SQL Server Errors:...
Question of the Day
A New Operator
In SQL Server 2025, what does this code return?
SELECT '1' || '0'See possible answers