Simple SQL: Attribute Splitting
If the design of a relational database is wrong, no amount of clever DML SQL will make it work well. Dr. Codd’s Information Principle is that you have, inside the entity tables, the columns that model the attributes of that entity. The columns contain scalar values. Tables that model relationships can have attributes, but they must have references to entities in the schema. You split those attributes at your peril. Joe Celko explains the basics.
Azure DWH part 11: Data Warehouse Migration Utility
There is a new utility to import data from SQL Server on premises or Azure SQL to Azure SQL Data Warehouse (ASDW)
Short Names
Today Steve Jones talks about the short cuts that developers might take, many of which aren't necessarily helpful.
Are your automated tests slowing you down?
Slow, unreliable tests prevent teams doing great work, and make continuous delivery impossible. So what can you do to improve your automated tests?
Getting Started with Azure SQL Data Warehouse - Part 6
Azure SQL Data Warehouse is Microsoft’s new enterprise-class, elastic petabyte-scale, data warehouse service that can scale according to organizational demands in just few minutes. In this installment, Arshad Ali covers the different ways to load data into SQL Data Warehouse.
Cool Projects
This week Steve Jones wants to know what type of really interesting projects you are working on. Is there something you really enjoy and look forward to building?
What do you do when you make a mistake?
We all make mistakes, what you do next is what is important.
Performance Myths: Oversizing string columns
Aaron Bertrand shows a quick demo that illustrates why you should be very careful about oversizing varchar / nvarchar columns.
Blogs
Upgrading SQL Server Containers on the Laptop
By Steve Jones
I don’t have SQL Server installed on my laptop. In an effort to keep...
How to Find Expensive Queries in Amazon Redshift
Slow-running queries can degrade your Redshift cluster’s performance and lead to increased costs. Identifying...
Forums
Having Issue deploying a report to an on prem server from PowerBI desktop
Using PowerBI Version1.25.9508.3237(January 2026). Installed Microsoft Power BI Desktop (Optimized for Power BI Report...
SQL 2019 instance with AG, across 2 Windows 2016 OS servers - OSin-place upgrade
Hi all Can I get some perspective from the community please on performing in-place...
How Long is a Long I/O?
Comments posted to this topic are about the item How Long is a Long...
Question of the Day
How Long is a Long I/O?
In SQL Server 2025, a long I/O is recorded in the error log with message 833. How long much an I/O request be outstanding before this message is written to the log?
See possible answers