Improve Query Performance when SQL Server Ignores Nonclustered Index
In this article, we look at why SQL Server may not use a non-clustered index over the clustered index and what you can do to improve performance.
Mastering a cloud migration: 10 video tips
If you haven’t had time to catch up on our latest full-length webinar on Cloud Migration, here’s an easy way to digest the tips from our experts in less than 20 minutes!
Learning with Sample Data
I just had my one-year anniversary working for Redgate, and I must tell you, it’s been one of the best years of my professional career of 25 years. People aside (and there are a lot of really great people!), one of the reasons I’ve enjoyed this year so much is that Redgate understands and believes […]
Be Valuable, Not Critical
One piece of advice for engineers is to be valuable, but not critical. It's a mistake Steve made early in his career, but he hopes you can do better.
First Normal Form Gets No Respect
Dr. Codd first described the relational model in a paper in Communications of the ACM (CACM 13 No 6; June 1970). Some more work followed up after that by other people, giving us normal forms and other things we have taken for granted for 50+ years.
Power Query Editor in Power BI for Formatting Text Columns
This article looks at ways to clean up text data used in Power BI reports and charts for a more meaningful and consistent message.
The Justification Database
Having a good process for managing security is important, but how many of us enforce that?
How We Ate Our Own Dog Food To Level-Up Internal Testing with Redgate Clone
Most applications have large and complex databases at the back end, making it hard for developers to adequately test their work before it goes out. Having a fast, repeatable process to deliver data on demand is an essential part of an effective software development lifecycle, ultimately leading to improved customer satisfaction. In this article, we’ll explore the journey our own engineering team went on to leverage our own tool, Redgate Clone, to spin up short-lived database instances in containers for automated testing.
Top 10 Methods to Improve ETL Performance Using SSIS
Extraction Transformation Load (ETL) is the backbone for any data warehouse. In the data warehouse world data is managed by the ETL process, which consists of three processes, Extraction-Pull/Acquire data from sources, Transformation-change data in the required format and Load-push data to the destination generally into a data warehouse or a data mart.
Bad Culture Bad Security
Another company has hard-coded credentials, which Steve feels are a sign of bad culture.
Blogs
Presenting Twice in May 2026
By alevyinroc
I will be presenting my latest session, Documenting Your Work for Worry-Free Vacations, in-person...
Finding the Next Sequence Value: #SQLNewBlogger
By Steve Jones
I saw a question asking about the next sequence value and decided to try...
SQL Server Journey Part 2: Modern Era (2017 – 2026) – AI/Cloud First
By Vinay Thakur
Following up on my Part 1 baseline, the journey from 2017 onward changed how...
Forums
Auto Update Statistics not triggering on filtered indexes
I've got a table with 186,703,969 rows, about 300GB of data. There are several...
What is the difference between SQL Server and SQL Database?
I created a SQL Database in Azure Portal but I've just noticed it also...
An Unusual Identity
Comments posted to this topic are about the item An Unusual Identity
Question of the Day
An Unusual Identity
What values are returned when I run this code?
CREATE TABLE dbo.IdentityTest2
(
id NUMERIC(10,0) IDENTITY(10,10) PRIMARY KEY,
somevalue VARCHAR(20)
)
GO
INSERT dbo.IdentityTest2
(
somevalue
)
VALUES
( 'Steve')
, ('Bill')
GO
SELECT top 10
id
FROM dbo.IdentityTest2 See possible answers