Spills SQL Server Doesn’t Warn You About
Table variables get a lot of bad press, and they deserve it. They are to query performance what the TSA is to air travel. No one’s sure what they’re doing, but they’ve been taking forever to do it.
Provisioning
This week Steve Jones is asking about the timeframe for you to get a new SQL Server instance? Is it substantial? Do you really know? Answer this week.
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.
Capacity Planning Using Performance Data
Erin Stellato discusses the types of performance data needed to help with capacity planning.
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.
Blogs
Who Are You Doing It For?
By Brian Kelley
But as I've matured over the years, I came to realize that I needed...
Presenting Twice in May 2026
By alevyinroc
I will be presenting my latest session, Documenting Your Work for Worry-Free Vacations, in-person...
Finding the Next Sequence Value: #SQLNewBlogger
By Steve Jones
I saw a question asking about the next sequence value and decided to try...
Forums
DB Design Methods
I've read a few posts regarding what we use to design DB models and...
Auto Update Statistics not triggering on filtered indexes
I've got a table with 186,703,969 rows, about 300GB of data. There are several...
What is the difference between SQL Server and SQL Database?
I created a SQL Database in Azure Portal but I've just noticed it also...
Question of the Day
An Unusual Identity
What values are returned when I run this code?
CREATE TABLE dbo.IdentityTest2
(
id NUMERIC(10,0) IDENTITY(10,10) PRIMARY KEY,
somevalue VARCHAR(20)
)
GO
INSERT dbo.IdentityTest2
(
somevalue
)
VALUES
( 'Steve')
, ('Bill')
GO
SELECT top 10
id
FROM dbo.IdentityTest2 See possible answers