Managing Packages Using Windows PowerShell

Windows hasn't had a package manager in the style of the Advanced Packaging Tool (APT) of Linux distributions. Apt-get is a great way of installing packages and other software. We have Chocolatey, of course which has a growing library of software and even allows you to automatically update software. Now PowerShell has an 'official' way of using any system, such as NuGet, Chocolatey, GitHub or PSget. It is definitely useful and likely to mature into an indispensable tool for Windows users. Nicolas explains wh.

The Future of Auditing

Auditing is a weak point in SQL Server according to Steve Jones. He looks at a few of its flaws.

Using Mod to Generate Work Shifts

A short story on using the mod function to a shifting query.

Capacity Planning Using Performance Data

Erin Stellato discusses the types of performance data needed to help with capacity planning.

Byte Me: Christmas Contingency

Disconnecting SQL Server connections after query execution

One way to improve SQL Server performance is to use as few resources as possible. In this post Rahul Mehta demonstrates how you can do this by disconnecting queries post-execution with a simple change in SSMS.

What is Azure SQL Data Warehouse?

Azure SQL Data Warehouse is a cloud-based, scale-out database capable of processing massive volumes of data, both relational and non-relational. Built on our massively parallel processing (MPP) architecture, SQL Data Warehouse can handle your enterprise workload.

CPU Spikes Caused by Periodic Scheduled Jobs

This article shows how to reduce the periodic spikes in the CPU that are caused by the periodic-executing jobs. There is a good reason to make some changes for dismissing them.

Test Coverage

We don't test software well enough. Obviously we don't write high enough quality software, but testing should catch more issues. Steve Jones talks about how you can perform better T-SQL testing.

How to Fix Ten SSDT Deployment Snags, With or Without ReadyRoll

Even a database development framework like Sql Server Data Tools (SSDT) doesn't get it right all the time, and there are ten deployment 'gotchas' in particular that can cause some head-scratching amongst developers to get right. From his unique perspective of creating a tool to make such deployments in SSDT less stressful, Dan Nolan discusses each pitfall and how to avoid it, whether you have ReadyRoll or not.