IDEs sweet but beguiling
IDEs are wonderful, but tend to lull you out of the good habits of thinking up front about how the code you write will be monitored and tested. So argues Phil Factor.
The Dangers of Algorithms
How we implement algorithms can change the way the world works with our software. Steve Jones wonders if we should be disclosing the algorithms themselves.
Redgate Instant Clone Beta
Redgate is in an early research phase of a tool that helps provision production-like databases for dev and test in a way that saves both time and storage. The team involved are looking for volunteers to provide feedback on the product as it's developed. If you think you'd be interested in trying out the tool, sign up for the beta program now.
SQL Server Performance Troubleshooting with SQL Monitor 5
Any SQL Server monitoring tool must gather the metrics that will allow a DBA to diagnose CPU, memory or I/O issues on their SQL Servers. It should also provide a set of accurate, reliable, configurable alerts that will inform the DBA of any abnormal or undesirable conditions and properties, as well as specific errors, on any of the monitored servers. This article provides an in-depth guide to the monitoring and alerting functionality available in one such tool, Redgate SQL Monitor. It focuses on the latest edition (5.0), which includes several key new features, such as performance diagnosis using wait statistics, the ability to compare to baselines, and more.
Database Design Follies: NULL vs. NOT NULL
It sounds simple enough. Either your column will always have a value or it may not. Yet somehow such a seemingly simple decision can become a never-ending debate where database schema begins to resemble superstition and designing effective tables seems more contentious than you expected it to be.
Public Data Sets
A list of data sets you can download and play with for practice, demos, or your own analysis.
Connected Development with SQL Server Data Tools
Although SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) encourages 'disconnected' database development, it also provides the SQL Server Object Explorer (SSOX) tool in SSDT’s Visual Studio shell to connect to a live development instance or view an SSDT project once all references have been resolved.
Unique Records In Oracle
Defining unique records in an Oracle table is necessary for employee data, and manufacturing part numbers and user names, to name a couple of examples. David Fitzjarrell looks at the various ways uniqueness can be defined, and which method may not be acceptable to third-party applications.
Blogs
Prime Day Recommendations
By Steve Jones
It’s Prime Day. A few of my recommendations, since I want to do some...
Fabric for Operational Reporting & SQL Endpoint Trap
With Fabric Mirroring, Microsoft is promoting a nice and appealing story for operational reporting...
Crawl, Walk, Run with Agentic Development of Power BI Assets
If you’ve been watching AI roll through the data community and thinking, “this seems...
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...
Concurrency and Baseline Control: Level 5 of the Stairway to Reliable Database Deployments
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Concurrency and Baseline Control: Level...
Spending Time in the Office
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Spending Time in the Office
Question of the Day
Multiple Values Inserted
I have this code on SQL Server 2022. What happens when it runs all at once?
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS dbo.Commission GO CREATE TABLE dbo.Commission (id INT NOT NULL IDENTITY(1,1) CONSTRAINT CommissionPK PRIMARY KEY , salesperson VARCHAR(20) , commission VARCHAR(20) ) GO INSERT dbo.Commission ( salesperson, commission) VALUES ( 'Brian', 12 ), ( 'Brian', 'None' ) GOSee possible answers