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
KDA: Echoes of Deception - Case 6
By Zikato
A cryptic message, a book cipher hidden in art provenance records, and a trail...
Capturing My Own Metrics: #SQLNewBlogger
By Steve Jones
A customer was trying to compare two tables and capture a state as a...
Red Flags in Your Query (T-SQL Tuesday #200)
By Zikato
When I'm looking at a query, I bet it's bad if I see... a...
Forums
BIT_COUNT II
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I Can't Make You Learn
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Why Your SQL Permissions Disappeared
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Question of the Day
BIT_COUNT II
In SQL Server 2025, I have a table (dbo.UserPermission) that contains this data:
UserID UserPermissions 15 23 37 4 NULLWhat is returned when I run this code:
select bit_count(UserPermissions) as PermissionCount from dbo.UserPermission where UserID = 4;See possible answers