How to Identify Useful SQL Server Table Statistics
In this article, Fikrat Azizov describes the different approaches to maintaining statistics and shows how you can use the data from your servers for intelligent statistics updates.
More Overloads
The overloading of terms creates confusion, which means that communication is more difficult.
Third Party Visuals in Power BI Desktop
Power BI is as extensible as it is powerful In this article you will see how to impress your users with added visuals
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.
Blogs
Funny Money: #SQLNewBlogger
By Steve Jones
While wandering around the documentation looking for some Question of the Day topics, I...
Why Database AI Agents need Layers?
By Arun Sirpal
Third part in my Ai series with databases. When building AI solutions within the...
Un-Migrating From the Cloud: T-SQL Tuesday #199
By Steve Jones
This month we have a very interesting invitation from Koen Verbeeck. He has hosted...
Forums
How Do the Experts Become Experts?
Comments posted to this topic are about the item How Do the Experts Become...
Stairway to Reliable Database Deployments Level 4 – Preparing for Production Deployment
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Stairway to Reliable Database Deployments...
Secure Communications
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Secure Communications
Question of the Day
Secure Communications
As of June 2026, what is the best version of TLS to use with SQL Server?
See possible answers