Level 5 of the Stairway to Synapse Analytics: create and use Delta Lake - Part 2
This next article in the Stairway to Synapse looks at Delta tables and processing streaming data.
Level 6 of the Stairway to Synapse Analytics: Dedicated SQL Pool
This next level of the Stairway to Synapse Analysis Services looks at the Dedicated SQL Pool.
Reflecting on the Mythical Man Month
Steve looks back at the Mythical Man Month, a book every software engineer and manager should read.
SQL Automate - A DBA's Time-Saving Toolkit
SQLAutomate is a lightweight PowerShell tool that simplifies SQL Server deployment by automating both installation and post-installation configuration. Whether you're setting up one instance or dozens, this guide shows how to use SQLAutomate to save time and reduce manual work.
Index Scans and Table Scans
There are several things that you can do to improve performance by throwing more hardware at the problem, but usually the place you get the most benefit from is when you tune your queries. One common problem that exists is the lack of indexes or incorrect indexes and therefore SQL Server has to process more data to find the records that meet the queries criteria. These issues are known as Index Scans and Table Scans.
Managing Fabric Lakehouse objects with the new CLI: Data Engineering with Fabric
In this next article, we are going to explore how to install, configure and use the command line to manage a couple different Fabric Lakehouse’s.
Purging Data from a Large Table in SQL Server
Purging data from a table is a common database maintenance task to prevent it from growing too large or to stay in compliance with data retention. When dealing with small amounts of data, this can be accomplished by a simple delete with no issues; however, with larger tables, this task can be problematic. Deleting records requires a lock that can block other processes from writing or even reading the data (depending on your isolation level). In this article I will share a technique I have used to work with some very large tables.
Helping Students with a Data Professional Career
Steve has advice for students looking to become data professionals.
DMV Comparison for SQL Server 2019 vs Azure SQL Database
What DMVs were added to Azure SQL Databases, and which DMVs are missing from Azure SQL Databases but still exist on SQL Server 2019 or other versions?
Blogs
A Career of Memories
By Steve Jones
Annabel retired from Redgate Software this week. Across most of my career at Redgate,...
Rethinking Index Maintenance: Why avg_fragmentation_in_percent Is Outdated and What You Should Do Instead
By Tim Radney
As a SQL Server DBA with years of experience tuning production environments, I’ve seen...
Microsoft Build 2026 announcements
By James Serra
Once again there were a number of Microsoft Build announcements related to data and...
Forums
Changes, Happiness, and a Few Tears
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BCP on Linux
Comments posted to this topic are about the item BCP on Linux
You Probably Don't Need a Vector Database
Comments posted to this topic are about the item You Probably Don't Need a...
Question of the Day
BCP on Linux
When running bcp on Linux, what is the field terminator?
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