“I would educate myself, and that I would never stop educating myself. It was my responsibility to keep learning.” Who said that? Albert Einstein? Da Vinci? Stephen Hawking? None of the above. That statement came from the Demon of the rock band KISS, Gene Simmons. If a rock & roll legend knows that it’s on […]
The old system function IsNumeric() often causes exasperation to a developer who is unfamiliar with the quirks of Transact SQL. It seems to think a comma or a number with a 'D' in the midde of it is a number. Phil Factor explains that though IsNumeric has its bugs, it real vice is that it doesn't tell you which of the numeric datatypes the string parameter can be coerced into, and because it doesn't check for overflow. Phil comes to the rescue with a couple of useful alternatives, one of which works whatever version of SQL Server you have, and which tell you what datatype the string can be converted to.
We show how to use RevolutionR to analyse & visualise purchasing behaviours in AdventureWorksDW2012.
In this article Randy Dyness shows you how to avoid temp tables whenever to maximize the performance of your queries.
Reporting Services is one of the most widely used subsystems in SQL Server and there have been some very creative solutions invented by DBAs around the world. New author Carolyn Richardson is one of those, bringing us a implementation that tracks uptime and disk space for her SQL Servers
This article by James Travis details the differences between IS NULL and = NULL. He also discusses the ANSI_NULLS setting.
Database code analysis will reduce the number of 'code smells' that creep into your database builds. It will alert the team to mistakes or omissions, such as missing indexes, that are likely to cause performance problems in production. It will allow the Governance and Operations team visibility into production readiness of the code, warning them of security loopholes and vulnerabilities. William Brewer describes the two technical approaches to database code analysis, static and dynamic, and suggests some tools that can help you get started.
When we look to improve software, we are often expressing our opinion on which items need to be handled first. It's helpful to keep in mind that it's an opinion being expressed, and not a vote, no matter how much it is solicited by a company.
The transaction log backup is stored in SQL Server proprietary format, just like the transaction log itself. Even though the transaction log backup is in a special format, Microsoft has provided us with the fn_dump_dblog() function to read transaction log backups. This function is undocumented, so you should use care when using this function in a production environment.
By Steve Jones
One of the parts of getting older that really sucks is I seem to...
By Chris Yates
The New Leadership Frontier In today’s digital landscape, leaders are no longer just visionaries....
By Steve Jones
anderance – n. the awareness that your partner perceives the relationship from a totally...
Hi, we put together an extract that runs every 15 minutes against what i...
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Parameter Sensitive Plan Optimization in...
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Minimum Change Tracking Retention
If I am running this code:
ALTER DATABASE AdventureWorks2017 SET CHANGE_TRACKING = ON (CHANGE_RETENTION=xxx);What is the minimum amount of time I can set? See possible answers