External Article

High Call Volume SQL Server Applications on NUMA Systems

One of the most difficult database operations to scale-up on high-end server systems is the network call. In fact, without special precautions, a high call volume database application can have severe negative scaling on large systems. It is suspected that this problem is more pronounced on NUMA systems than basic SMP systems. A NUMA system with 16 processors can have significantly lower throughput capability than an otherwise comparable 4-way SMP system.

Technical Article

VIEWS: The Key to Database Agility

There is an important technique for creating truly agile databases that I haven’t seen in his writings; one which is well-known to DBAs, but little understood in the application development community – the use of database views to create a layer of abstraction between the normalized relational tables and the applications that use the data.

SQLServerCentral Article

Have You Been Told Today

SQL Server 2000 has a great job and alert subsystem, but it doesn't do everything. There are times when you want to be notified that something has completed, or not completed. New author Frank Loschiavo brings us a way to ensure that when you run a query you are notified if and when it completes.

Technical Article

The Steps to monitoring greatness

SQL Server Profiler can correlate Microsoft Windows System Monitor (Performance Monitor in Windows NT 4.0) counters with SQL Server or SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services (SSAS) events. Windows System Monitor logs system activity for specified counters in performance logs. The first thing to remember is in order to have correlating information you need to obviously be in sync - in other words you must start the perfmon trace and profiler trace at the same time or else they won't match up.

External Article

Database Geek of the Week - Gary Mallow

Database geeks are all around us. I met Gary Mallow on the email list of a cycling group run by a local church. After some conversation, I discovered that he is a director of a group of developers who build applications, sometimes using .NET and often using Oracle as a database. Like me, Gary is not entirely comfortable with his ability as a UI developer, and so finds database work a good fit.

SQLServerCentral Article

How To Mess Up An Interview

We started a trend with our Worst Practices, looking at things you should not do instead of those you should. Sean McCown has taken that to a new level looking at some things that you can do to ensure you don't get your next job. Read about a few things that you might avoid in your next interview.

Blogs

T-SQL Tuesday #192: What career risks have you taken?

By

I’m honored to be hosting T-SQL Tuesday — edition #192. For those who may...

AI: Blog a Day – Day 3: LLM Models – Open Source vs Closed Source

By

Continuing from Day 2 , we learned introduction on Generative AI and Agentic AI,...

How to Parameterize Fabric Linked Services in Azure Data Factory for Azure Devops Deployment

By

Quite the title, so let me set the stage first. You have an Azure...

Read the latest Blogs

Forums

Rollback vs. Roll Forward

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Rollback vs. Roll Forward

Foreign Keys - Foes or Friend?

By utsav

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Foreign Keys - Foes or...

Fun with JSON I

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Fun with JSON I

Visit the forum

Question of the Day

Fun with JSON I

I have some data in a table: 

CREATE TABLE #test_data
(
    id INT PRIMARY KEY,
    name VARCHAR(100),
    birth_date DATE
);

-- Step 2: Insert rows  
INSERT INTO #test_data
VALUES
(1, 'Olivia', '2025-01-05'),
(2, 'Emma', '2025-03-02'),
(3, 'Liam', '2025-11-15'),
(4, 'Noah', '2025-12-22');
If I run this query, how many rows are returned? 
SELECT *
FROM OPENJSON(
     (
         SELECT t.* FROM #test_data AS t FOR JSON PATH
     )
             ) t;

See possible answers