Why Redgate is Running a Database Development Disasters Contest?
Kendra Little explains why Redgate would like to hear your stories of how the database has been left behind.
Google's Expensive Confusing Rules
Google was recently fined for GDPR violations. Steve wonders if their confusing documentation and tools are the problem.
SQL Server Perfmon counters that are still interesting in 2019
Years ago, my first go-to tool for performance tuning was Performance Monitor: it was available everywhere, worked in all versions, and gave me a lot of useful information without paying for a monitoring tool. Since then, I’ve moved on – wait stats are a much better starting point – but there are still 3 good Perfmon counters that I rely on.
Hard Drive Reliability
Backblaze releases their new hard drive stats and there are some interesting items in the report.
Using Computed Columns
Although computed columns are from the beginning of SQL Server, not everyone knows how to use them. This article will help you better understand how it works.
Infrastructure Planning for a SQL Server Data Warehouse
In this tip we look at some things you should think about when planning for a SQL Server data warehouse.
A Capital Error
It's not the zero'th time Phil Factor has complained about the madness of a binary collation.
DR Prep Can Miss the Little Things
A minor disaster for Steve reveals some cracks in his pre-DR planning.
Empty Thoughts: Working with NULL
Whether or not to have NULLable columns in a table can be a religious debate, and how missing data is represented should be carefully considered during database design. In this article, Joe Celko considers the ways that SQL Server handles NULLs in several situations.
Blogs
A New Word: on tenderhooks
By Steve Jones
on tenderhooks – adj. feeling the primal satisfaction of being needed by someone, which...
Ramblings about data communities and your contributions, no excuses
By DataOnWheels
I have been active in the data community throughout my career. I have met...
SQL Server Journey till 2025 (brief)
By Vinay Thakur
Quick Summary for Microsoft SQL Server till 2025, I am fortunate to be part...
Forums
Simulating Mercury’s Orbital Motion Using Pure T-SQL (NASA 2025 Dataset)
SQL Server is typically viewed as a transactional or analytical database engine. However, it...
Azure SQL Database | CREATE EVENT SESSION [Blocking_Capture] ON DATABASE
Hello, Is there a way in Azure SQL Database to change the 'Blocking Process...
Having a Little Fun at SQL Server Central
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Having a Little Fun at...
Question of the Day
String Similarity I
On SQL Server 2025, when I run this, what is returned?
SELECT EDIT_DISTANCE_SIMILARITY('SQL Server', 'MySQL') See possible answers