Redgate’s 2016 Roadmap
What do you get for your Support & Upgrades package? Read this blog post to learn about the new functionality and improvements Redgate is releasing this year. Find out more.
What's "Actually" going on with that Seek?
Rob Farley digs deeper into seeks and actual rows read, demonstrating a case where you want a non-sargable expression in the WHERE clause.
Where's the Unit Testing?
Today Steve Jones wonders why we don't unit test more, especially for databases.
The IT Manager's perspective: People as an Asset
Information Technology is fast-changing, but the people who work in IT need to have a good chance of a long-term career. That means keeping up to date, not only in their current speciality, but in the wider sphere of the technology they work with. IT managers must make sure that keeping up to date with technology is part of the day to day activity of their people. How should they make sure it happens?
How do you know when it is time to leave a job?
Today we have a guest editorial from Ben Kubicek as Steve is traveling out of town. I discovered I had stayed at a job about two years too long. Why was that?
PowerShell Desired State Configuration: Automating and Monitoring Pull mode
The Pull mode of Desired State Configuration (DSC) is more complicated to implement because you need to meticulously manage the MOF files and their naming conventions so as to ensure that you deploy your DSC configurations correctly. In this first article of a two-part series, Nicolas Prigent describes how you can best automate this, and then in a second part on monitoring DSC he describes techniques to help you to use the pull mode as a regular part of your admin work.
Target Recovery Interval and Indirect Checkpoint
Indirect checkpoint is the recommended configuration, especially on systems with large memory footprints and default for databases created in SQL Server 2016.
SQL Server differences of char, nchar, varchar and nvarchar data types
Sherlee Dizon looks at the basic differences between char, nchar, varchar, and nvarchar, as well as what to be aware of when using each data type.
Blogs
Setting Up a Mac for Data Engineering and AI Work
If you work with data pipelines, SQL, notebooks, or machine learning models, a Mac...
Want to look at cloud reporting but not sure what the costs will be?
By ChrisJenkins
Have you been thinking about migrating your reporting to Microsoft Fabric or Snowflake but...
The Joyful Craftsmen and the Revolt BI join forces
The Joyful Craftsmen has become the new owner of Revolt BI. The merger creates...
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 Enum Implementation: A Single-Row View Strategy for Avoiding Magic Values
Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Server Enum Implementation: A...
BIT_COUNT I
Comments posted to this topic are about the item BIT_COUNT I
Question of the Day
BIT_COUNT I
In SQL Server 2025, I have a table (dbo.UserPermission) that contains this data:
UserID UserPermissions 15 23 37What is returned when I run this code:
select bit_count(UserPermissions) as PermissionCount from dbo.UserPermission where UserID = 3;See possible answers