Measuring Effectiveness
Being effective is important to Steve. Today he talks about the things you might consider when trying to determine if your group is being effective.
New Preview of SQL Server Management Studio Available for Download
On September 24th Microsoft released the first Community Technical Preview for SQL Server 2019, which was CTP2.0. At the same time Microsoft pushed out a new preview for SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) known as version 18. Now is the time to download this new preview!
SQL Server Logical Reads – What do they really tell us?
SQL Server trace, the most common tool DBAs use to evaluate query performance, provides the ‘logical reads’ counter on which many DBAs rely for evaluating a query’s I/O performance. In this article, we will examine this counter’s true meaning and provide examples that prove it can sometimes be quite misleading
Where's that Snippet?
Phil Factor has tried many different ways to remember code and archive old code for reuse, but has yet to find the perfect solution. Does it exist?
Introduction to AWS Elastic Beanstalk
The AWS Elastic Beanstalk feature is a web application provisioning service that allows you to automatically scale as needed. In this article, Gerald Bauer explains how to set up and configure Elastic Beanstalks through the AWS dashboard and Visual Studio.
Do you have a security to-do list?
Security is important, and Steve wonders if any of us have a list of things we do that improve security.
Two Things I Would Change in SSISDB Setup
I suggest these two changes to the SSISDB setup to prevent issues down the road.
Manage Data Across Multiple Sources with Azure Data Studio
Azure Data Studio, now the official name of SQL Operations Studio, was released in September. The biggest news regarding the release is the extensions that are now available, as Julie Lerman describes.
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