Level 5 of the Stairway to Synapse Analytics: create and use Delta Lake - Part 2
This next article in the Stairway to Synapse looks at Delta tables and processing streaming data.
Level 6 of the Stairway to Synapse Analytics: Dedicated SQL Pool
This next level of the Stairway to Synapse Analysis Services looks at the Dedicated SQL Pool.
Reflecting on the Mythical Man Month
Steve looks back at the Mythical Man Month, a book every software engineer and manager should read.
SQL Automate - A DBA's Time-Saving Toolkit
SQLAutomate is a lightweight PowerShell tool that simplifies SQL Server deployment by automating both installation and post-installation configuration. Whether you're setting up one instance or dozens, this guide shows how to use SQLAutomate to save time and reduce manual work.
Index Scans and Table Scans
There are several things that you can do to improve performance by throwing more hardware at the problem, but usually the place you get the most benefit from is when you tune your queries. One common problem that exists is the lack of indexes or incorrect indexes and therefore SQL Server has to process more data to find the records that meet the queries criteria. These issues are known as Index Scans and Table Scans.
Managing Fabric Lakehouse objects with the new CLI: Data Engineering with Fabric
In this next article, we are going to explore how to install, configure and use the command line to manage a couple different Fabric Lakehouse’s.
Purging Data from a Large Table in SQL Server
Purging data from a table is a common database maintenance task to prevent it from growing too large or to stay in compliance with data retention. When dealing with small amounts of data, this can be accomplished by a simple delete with no issues; however, with larger tables, this task can be problematic. Deleting records requires a lock that can block other processes from writing or even reading the data (depending on your isolation level). In this article I will share a technique I have used to work with some very large tables.
Helping Students with a Data Professional Career
Steve has advice for students looking to become data professionals.
DMV Comparison for SQL Server 2019 vs Azure SQL Database
What DMVs were added to Azure SQL Databases, and which DMVs are missing from Azure SQL Databases but still exist on SQL Server 2019 or other versions?
Blogs
T-SQL Tuesday #203: Risk and Reward
By Steve Jones
This is timely, as I’m currently on a boat in the Adriatic taking a...
dataMinds Connect 2026 – Slides & Scripts
You can find the slides and SQL scripts for my session “Spice up your...
How to Clear the SSMS Cache (SSMS 21 and Later)
By SQLPals
How to Clear the SSMS Cache (SSMS 21 and Later) Updated...
Forums
Using CHOOSE()
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Re-Seeding a Broken Log Shipping Secondary (Without Touching the Primary)
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Re-Seeding a Broken Log Shipping...
The DBA is Dead! Long Live the !
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The DBA is Dead! Long...
Question of the Day
Using CHOOSE()
We have this code that sets some status values and then queries them using the CHOOSE() function in SQL Server 2025.
CREATE TABLE Status
(
StatusID INT,
StatusDescription VARCHAR(20)
);
GO
INSERT dbo.Status
(
StatusID,
StatusDescription
)
VALUES
(0, 'Uncategorized'),
(1, 'Active'),
(2, 'Inactive'),
(3, 'Temp');
GO
SELECT CHOOSE(StatusID, 'Unknown', 'Active', 'Inactive', 'Temporary')
FROM Status;
When the SELECT runs, what is returned? See possible answers