Dealing with High Concurrency with Table Hints
Systems with a large number of requests on a critical database table are prone to blocking and slowness. We take a look at getting things done using T-SQL table hints.
Migrating Schema Between Platforms
The decision to change platforms isn't one Steve Jones takes lightly.
Properly Persisted Computed Columns
Paul White walks through a new trace flag in SQL Server 2016 designed to yield better execution plans (and performance) for queries involving computed columns.
Statistics in SQL: Kendall’s Tau rank correlation
Statistical calculations in SQL are often perfectly easy to do. SQL was designed to be a natural fit for calculating correlation, regression and variance on large quantities of data. It just isn't always immediately obvious how. In the second of a series of articles, Phil factor shows how calculating a non-parametric correlation via Kendall's Tau or Spearman's Rho can be stress-free.
DevOps Can Help
DevOps can help, not just development, but also infrastructure, if you spend time adapting the practices to your environment.
Help for DBAs Who Support SSIS…
SSIS Catalog Compare helps DBAs work with their SSIS project configurations and catalogs, deploying changes from environment to environment.
Scoring Outliers with R
What is normal? More to the point, what is abnormal? We will look at using R to score outliers in a typical monitoring dataset.
Your Job Description
This Friday Steve Jones talks about job posting and descriptions. This is the chance to think about what you do and how you might describe this to your replacement.
Blogs
Monday Monitor Tips: Virtual Machine Usage and Cost
By Steve Jones
One of the things I’ve been requesting for a number of years is cost...
Advice I Like: Respect
By Steve Jones
“Don’t aim to have others like you; aim to have them respect you.” –...
Blue Sky Programming – The Optimism Trap
Many years ago, before I joined Oracle, I was working on a major modernisation...
Forums
SQL Art, Part 4: Happy 4th of July — A British DBA's Guide to Celebrating a War We Don't Talk About
Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Art, Part 4: Happy...
SQL Server Still Wins
Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Server Still Wins
DBCC CHECKDB Limits I
Comments posted to this topic are about the item DBCC CHECKDB Limits I
Question of the Day
DBCC CHECKDB Limits I
When running DBCC CHECKDB on SQL Server 2025, can I include the Resource Database?
See possible answers