Getting Out of Character
In this article, Joe Celko gives us a history of the different character sets that are used in computing and how that can pertain to your usage in relational databases. Some of these you may have never heard of!
PASS Data Community Summit 2023 registrations are open!
In 2023, connect, share & learn with like-minded peers, speakers, and industry leaders during the full week of data celebrations. Summit happens in person, from November 14th to 17th in Seattle. Check out the blog post and learn more.
Finding Your Own Career
Learning to find the career that's important to you can be a challenge. Today Steve has some advice.
How to Improve Database Design to Speed Up SQL Queries
This article examines some basic database design principles that help ensure your queries can execute more quickly.
7 ways businesses can improve the quality and speed of database releases
This article explains how these ‘ephemeral databases’ can be used to improve development and testing processes in ways that reduce the number of bugs entering the deployment pipeline, drive up the quality of database releases, and so improve the reliability and speed of database deployments to production.
Star Schema vs Snowflake Schema Considerations
Sometimes people say to avoid the snowflake schema and stick to a clean star schema. Why is that? Is something wrong with creating a snowflake schema?
How to Find the SQL Server Instance Startup Time
Learn a number of methods to view or programmatically get the SQL Server instance startup time.
Database Branching and Merging without the Tears
Armed with a schema comparison engine and an object-level directory of the source for every recent version of the database, you'll be able to remove a lot of the uncertainty around merging database changes back into development.
Blogs
Who Are You Doing It For?
By Brian Kelley
But as I've matured over the years, I came to realize that I needed...
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...
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