In this article, we’ll revisit the dimension models we created. We wrote the entire SQL statement for the dimension by hand, and the dimensions themselves were very rudimentary; they lacked a surrogate key and there were no audit columns (such as insert date and update date). We’ll show you how we can expand the dimensions using Jinja, but also how we can minimize development effort by baking reusable patterns into the Jinja code.
Page splits are an often-overlooked performance killer in SQL Server. In this article, we take a forensic look at how serial inserts differ from mid-table inserts, revealing why inserting rows out of order causes hidden page splits, increased IO, and fragmentation. Using a wide-column table, we demonstrate both scenarios and decode their impact with page-level analysis.
TEXT, NTEXT, and IMAGE columns have been deprecated for nearly two decades, yet they still silently haunt many SQL Server environments. This article explains their hidden limitations with practical demos and shows why migrating to VARCHAR(MAX), NVARCHAR(MAX), and VARBINARY(MAX) is critical for modern performance, maintainability, and future upgrades.
When you run a CI/CD pipeline, you often need confidential values like passwords, authentication tokens, service principal secrets etc. when you want to deploy a certain artefact. You don’t want to store those secrets directly in your pipelines as this might pose a considerable security leak. Instead, you either store them as secret variables, or […]
Introduction ChatGPT includes custom GPTs. You can create your own custom GPT. In this article, we will demonstrate how to create a custom GPT expert in SQL Server. Requirements To create your own GPT, you need to use the paid version of ChatGPT. First, go to ChatGPT. Secondly, if you don’t have the paid version, […]
Most DBAs are familiar with full and differential ...
Large Language Models (LLMs) like Anthropic’s Cl...
Overview MongoDB is a popular NoSQL database used for building modern, scalable applications. In this article, we’ll cover how to set up MongoDB on Windows and connect to it using Node.js. We will also perform some basic Create, Read, Update, and Delete (CRUD) operations to ensure we understand fully on how Node.js can be made […]
Is your SQL Server truly secure? Here are the top cyber threats targeting it. Learn how you can stop them before it strikes.
By Vinay Thakur
it has been a year since i have not written much on the blog...
By Steve Jones
on tenderhooks – adj. feeling the primal satisfaction of being needed by someone, which...
By DataOnWheels
I have been active in the data community throughout my career. I have met...
I have a quick question on Ola Hallengren Index Optimize Maintenance . Do we...
hi, in an ssis for each loop over an object variable called MyListVariable, i...
SQL Server is typically viewed as a transactional or analytical database engine. However, it...
On SQL Server 2025, when I run this, what is returned?
SELECT EDIT_DISTANCE_SIMILARITY('SQL Server', 'MySQL') See possible answers