Data for Defense
The Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center actively works to track the world's hackers and help warn us when we become the object of their attacks.
Increase Query Speed with Covering Indexes
Improving the response times of queries in SQL Server is a common task for DBAs and developers. In this article, we will talk about how you can effectively use covered indexes to improve your performance, and when you should use them.
Implementing SQL Server Integration Services with Azure Data Factory
Read on to step through the process of implementing Azure Data Factories.
Using All Your Tools
Steve looks at a number of tools that you should spend time learning and building a level of comfort that enables you to use them in your daily work.
Performance Tuning Using Extended Events: Part 1
In this article, learn how to identify performance tuning opportunities using Extended Events.
What's a forgivable mistake?
Today Steve wonders if your company is understanding of your human frailty.
From Source Control to Database using SQL Compare Command Line
Giorgi Abashidze explains how his team use SQL Compare Command line to automate database deployments for their customers, without having access to the real staging or production databases, merely by using our development database contained under TFS Source Control.
Understanding Azure Storage Options
The choices found when provisioning storage in Azure can be overwhelming. In this article, Monica Rathbun explains the options to help your organization research which storage might be right for your solution.
Expect the Unexpected with DiRT
Disaster recovery is no joke at Google, where they really test their systems, people, and processes.
UNION vs. UNION ALL in SQL Server
Sometimes there is a need to combine data from multiple tables or views into one comprehensive dataset. This may be for like tables within the same database or maybe there is a need to combine like data across databases or even across servers. I have read about the UNION and UNION ALL commands, but how do these work and how do they differ?
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
DB Design Methods
I've read a few posts regarding what we use to design DB models and...
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...
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