Open Source is Not a Career Path
A reprint from the early days of SQLServerCentral as Steve is on vacation. Here is Steve Jones' Open Source Musings from February 3, 2005.
Improve Row Count Estimates for Table Variables without Changing Code
Table variables can cause performance issues with joins when they contain a large number of rows. In SQL Server 2019, Microsoft has improved how the optimizer works with table variables which can improve performance without making changes to your code. In this article, Greg Larsen explains how this feature works and if it really does make a difference.
Testing SQL Server Stored Procedures and Functions with SQL Data Compare
Phil Factor demonstrates a cunning way to test stored procedures or functions, such as after refactoring, by storing the 'before' and 'after' results in views and then using SQL Data Compare to spot any discrepancies.
Evaluating Life at Work
It can be hard to evaluate your career and job situation, but Steve has some ideas today.
Can I Offload DBCC CHECKDB To Another Server?
You want to check for corruption, but you don’t want to slow down your primary production server. In this post, I’m specifically talking about offloading the corruption checking process. I’m not talking about doing corruption checking on both the primary and other servers – that’s wonderful, and if you’re doing that, you should hug yourself. You’re doing a good job. Who’s a good dog? You are! Good dog.
What is the impact of remote working on estate management?
Distributed workforces have very quickly become the norm. The 2020 State of Database Monitoring survey explores the impact of remote working on estate management and how organisations are responding. You can read the full findings in the free report, here.
Provisioning Azure SQL Database with Failover groups using Terraform
Get a basic introduction to Terraform by deploying and removing SQL Servers and a failover group to Azure.
Why Billing Will Be Part of Our Job
I am old enough to remember when many large corporations implemented chargebacks. Essentially, each internal department was charged for their usage of IT systems, similar to how we are charged in the cloud. It was a mess, and individual departments had to answer for excessive charges. I don't know that any department ever lost service, […]
Hands-On with Columnstore Indexes: Part 1 Architecture
Microsoft introduced Columnstore with SQL Server 2012 and have improved the feature in every version since then. You may be wondering why they are different than traditional indexes and how they work. In this series, Edward Pollack explains the architecture of Columnstore indexes. In future articles in the series, he will describe best practices for Columnstore.
Blogs
Moving On-Prem PostgreSQL to the Cloud: Picking the Right Path for Big Tables
Every PostgreSQL migration eventually hits the same fork in the road. The database is...
A Spread of Vacation
By Steve Jones
I’m off on vacation today. Which is a little weird as I just got...
How AgentDBA Identifies Backup Failures
By Arun Sirpal
Every DBA has a box like this. Sitting untouched for months. Nobody’s proud of...
Forums
Have you done a Mid year check in?
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From SQL Server On-Premises to Claude Desktop: How I built a Full MCP Pipeline
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Independence Day 2026
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Independence Day 2026
Question of the Day
Independence Day 2026
In the original Independence Day movie (1996), what type of computer did Jeff Goldblum use to connect to the alien mainframe? Take a guess, don't look it up or ask AI.
See possible answers