Do You Still Use CHAR?
When designing a database, choosing good datatypes is important, but not necessarily all the time. Today Steve wonders if you still use fixed sting data types.
SQL Server Development Using Free Tools
You can make SQL Server database development faster and easier with a FREE toolkit!
Reporting on the Progress of a Flyway Database Development Project
This article demos a novel way to report on the progress of your Flyway development project. It provides both SQL and PowerShell versions of code that extracts information for each database version from the Flyway schema history table and then plots it in a Gantt chart.
Vertipaq optimization and its impact on columnstore compression
Vertipaq optimization is a critical component of the columnstore compression process. Edward Pollack explains how it works and what you need to know to manage it.
The Cloud as a Foundation
The innovations and possibilities of cloud computing are exciting to Steve.
Share your insights and help shape the Summit 2022 program
We want to hear from you! Tell us what's important to you by sharing your insights and preferences for PASS Data Community Summit 2022. Community feedback is at the heart of everything we do for Summit and your insights will help guide our planning for this year's conference, taking place online and in-person in Seattle, November 15 - 18, 2022.
Transformations by the Oracle Optimizer
To troubleshoot poorly performing SQL in Oracle, you must understand which transformations the optimizer has made. Jonathan Lewis demonstrates several possible optimizations for one query.
PostgreSQL in Azure using the Azure Data Studio Extension
Learn how to create a PostgreSQL database and work with it from Azure Data Studio.
Speedy Break Fix
Is DevOps and Agile better than waterfall? Steve has a few thoughts after a recent experience.
Enterprise SQL Server Performance Tuning and Management with dbWatch
We need to transition our team from single instance management and monitoring to managing the overall environment and addressing our most pressing needs to support the organization. How can we move from managing the trees to managing the forest in an efficient and automated manner with a small team?
Blogs
Learn Better: Pause to Review More
By Brian Kelley
If you want to learn better, pause more in your learning to intentionally review.
Azure SQL Managed Instance Next-Gen: Bring on the IOPS
By John
If you’ve used Azure SQL Managed Instance General Purpose, you know the drill: to...
SQL, MDX, DAX – the languages of data
By DataOnWheels
Ramblings of a retired data architect Let me start by saying that I have...
Forums
Connecting Power BI to SSAS and effective user not working
Hi everyone, Below is a consolidated summary of what we validated Architecture & data...
High Availability setup - has anyone seen this method?
Hi all, I recently moved to a new employer who have their HA setup...
Semantic Search in SQL Server 2025
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Semantic Search in SQL Server...
Question of the Day
Encoding URLs
I have this data in a SQL Server 2025 table:
CREATE TABLE Response ( ResponseID INT NOT NULL CONSTRAINT ResponsePK PRIMARY KEY , ResponseVal VARBINARY(5000) ) GOIf I want to get a value from this table that I can add to a URL in a browser, which of these code items produces a result I can use? See possible answers