External Article

T-SQL Window Function Speed Phreakery: The FIFO Stock Inventory Problem

Sometimes, in the quest for raw SQL performance, you are forced to sacrifice legibility and maintainability of your code, unless you then document your code lavishly. Phil Factor's SQL Speed Phreak challenge produced some memorable code, but can SQL features introduced since then help to produce code that performs as well and is also easy to understand? Kathi Kellenberger investigates.

Technical Article

What is Code Coverage For?

Code coverage is a practice that goes hand in hand with automated testing, reporting the percentage of your code that has been exercised during a test run. Ed Elliott and Redgate have partnered to make a code coverage tool available for SQL Server, both free and open source. SQL Cover measures the coverage of your SQL Server stored procedures and functions. It has built-in support for the popular tSQLt unit testing framework, but can also be used alongside any automated testing framework of your choosing. Find out more in this blog post.

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Question of the Day

Backing Up a DMK

In SQL Server 2025, I have a database with a Database Masker Key (DMK). I want to back up this key and keep a copy offline. When do I have to open this key before running the backup?

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