Is a RID Lookup faster than a Key Lookup?
For T-SQL Tuesday #78, Aaron Bertrand takes a look at whether RID Lookups are faster than Key Lookups, with a small battery of fairly simple duration tests.
Great Developers
A great developer is worth more than an average one, but how much more? Steve Jones has a few thoughts for you to think about.
Mentors and Professional Groups
When wrestling with technical problems or ideas, it is good to discuss with, argue against, present ideas to, and listen to your colleagues. This is true of anyone working in IT, but really important for the likes of database professionals who are engaged in a very rapidly-developing engineering specialism that demands that you keep up […]
Connecting to SQL Data Warehouse
The most frustrating thing with any new system is often just working out how to connect to it. Oddly, you can’t use SSMS with SQL Data Warehouse, but it is fine with SSDT, SSIS, Power BI desktop, sqlcmd, BCP, and a range of Microsoft cloud services - there are PowerShell Cmdlets too. Rob Sheldon provides the details.
Bias, the Serial Killer of Diversity
Today we have a guest editorial from Kellyn Pot'Vin that tackles the tough topic of diversity.
Dynamically Query a 100 Million Row Table-Efficiently
This article describes methods of creating dynamic queries without the use of dynamic SQL to efficiently access large tables.
Automatically Creating UML Database Diagrams for SQL Server
SQL Server database developers seem reluctant to use diagrams when documenting their databases. It is probably because it has, in the past, been difficult to automatically draw precisely what you want, other than a vast Entity-relationship diagram. However, you can do it without buying any third-party tool, just using some existing Java-based open-source tools; and can even automate it entirely, using SQL and PowerShell. Phil Factor shows how.
Diagnosing parallelism-related latching
Diagnosing and resolving parallelism-related latching and blocking in SQL Server using DMV’s, the activity monitor, procedure execution plans, and index tuning.
Should I Stay or Go?
Today we have a guest editorial from Andy Warren that looks at the decision to leave a job. Or not.
A tour through tool improvements in SQL Server 2016
Ayo Olubeko talks through the improvements being made to SQL Server tooling in 2016.
Blogs
SQL Server Journey Part 2: Modern Era (2017 – 2026) – AI/Cloud First
By Vinay Thakur
Following up on my Part 1 baseline, the journey from 2017 onward changed how...
Google Moves Up Post-Quantum Cryptography Timeline
By Brian Kelley
In cryptography, the RSA and ECC algorithms which we use primarily for asymmetric cryptography...
The Book of Redgate: No Politics
By Steve Jones
In today’s world, this might mean something different, but in 2010, we had this...
Forums
An Unusual Identity
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T-SQL in SQL Server 2025: JSON_OBJECTAGG
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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