Creating SSRS Tabular Reports with Sparklines and Charts
Learn how to add a sparkline and line chart to your SQL Server 2014 Reporting Services reports.
The Five Year Plan
Is your IT department outdated? There's a prediction that they won't be around in five years. Steve Jones doesn't agree.
Your Professional Development and the PASS Organization
There are so many ways of keeping your technical skills and knowledge up-to-date. There are books, articles, conferences, video courses and so on, but nothing beats discussion and debate with professional people in other organisations facing a similar range of technical challenges, some of which you share, and others you maybe haven't yet. PASS is unique in providing just this vital ingredient for database professionals using the Microsoft Data Stack.
The One Metric to Rule Them All
Measuring the performance of systems isn't always just CPU, RAM, and Disk IO. Today Steve Jones looks at business based metrics.
Some Tips for Minimising the Pain of HTML Input Forms
HTML Input forms are, by their nature, tiresome for the user of any website. However, with some attention to detail and a dash of JavaScript, it is possible to reduce the drudgery of form-filling to the minimum and minimise mistakes. Dino explains four ways of making things better for the user of your website.
Troubleshooting a painful query using execution plans in SQL Monitor
When something's wrong with your database you need to be able to identify the primary pain points within SQL Server and get to the root cause of the problem fast. Grant Fritchey explains how you can use execution plans inside SQL Monitor to help quickly and simply identify the problem.
Downloading multiple files from internet with SSIS and C#
This is a tutorial to download multiple files from internet using the SSIS Script Task.
Testing Coders
It seems that everyone has a different idea on how to interview people. Today Steve Jones looks at the technique of having someone improve some code in real time.
Can comments hamper stored procedure performance?
After a recent conversation on Twitter, Aaron Bertrand shows where excessive comments in your stored procedures might have an impact on performance.
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