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Automated Database Provisioning for Development and Testing

If your development team needs to work on anonymised copies of the current production database, and if changes are being delivered rapidly as well, that could mean a lot of time and routine DevOps work copying databases. SQL Clone was designed for tasks like this. Grant Fritchey investigates whether you save time, effort and scripting over the more traditional approach, and at what point it makes sense to use it.

SQLServerCentral Editorial

The Achilles Heel

In a long career in IT, Phil Factor cannot recall a 'major incident', where the failure or breach was due to a single 'Achilles Heel', or even a single team of people. They are always due to a whole plethora of slack and ignorant practices.

External Article

SQL Server Integration Services SSIS 2016 Tutorial

SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) is the integration and ETL (extract – transform – load) tool in the Microsoft Data Platform stack. SSIS is typically used in data warehousing scenarios, but can also be used in common data integration use cases or just to move data around. SSIS is used behind the scenes in the Maintenance Plans of SQL Server and in the Import/Export wizard.

External Article

The Basics of Good T-SQL Coding Style – Part 4: Performance

There are several obvious problems with poor SQL Coding habits. It can make code difficult to maintain, or can confuse your team colleagues. It can make refactoring a chore or make testing difficult. The most serious problem is poor performance. You can write SQL that looks beautiful but performs sluggishly, or interferes with other threads. A busy database developer adopts good habits so as to avoid staring at execution plans. Rob Sheldon gives some examples.

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Distance Metric Algorithms

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Question of the Day

Distance Metric Algorithms

What are the distance metric algorithms that can be used in VECTOR_DISTANCE()?

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