Backup File Inventory
Are you using Ola Hallengren's Maintenance Solution? Here's a Python script that helps you keep track of your backup file inventory.
Crafting Your Resume
Today Steve Jones talks about how you can present yourself better within the confines of a resume.
Microsoft IT: A Case Study on “Hekaton” against RPM
I/O latch can cause session delays that impact application performance. This white paper describes the procedures and common I/O latch issues when migrating to Hekaton in SQL Server 2014. It also includes challenges that occurred during the migration and the performance analysis at different stages.
Create/write to an Excel 2007/2010 spreadsheet from an SSIS package
Excel spreadsheets are useful for distributing data generated by SQL Server. EPPlus is an open source .NET library that reads/writes Excel 2007/2010 files using the Open Office XML format (XLSX). It is a mature project, and plays well with SSIS.
The Market
This Friday Steve Jones asks about the market price for your skills. Do you know what it is?
Correct SQL Server TempDB Spills in Query Plans Caused by Outdated Statistics
Sergey Gigoyan looks at how to address the warning: Operator used tempdb to spill data during execution with spill level 1.
Design a Better SQL Server Pricing Model
Today we have a guest editorial from Andy Warren that talks about SQL Server the no one's favorite topic: licensing.
Microsoft Azure DocumentDB
Microsoft's DocumentDB is a late-entrant in the Document-oriented database field. However, it benefits from being designed from the start as a cloud service with a SQL-like language. It is intended for mobile and web applications. Its JSON document-notation is compatible with the integrated JavaScript language that drives its multi-document transaction processing via stored procedures, triggers and UDFs. Robert Sheldon investigates its SQL-like query language.
Hard Data v Gut Feel
Data is more important than gut feel, or at least, Steve Jones thinks it should be more important. Today he talks about using data to support decisions.
Network Load Testing Using iPerf
Tim Radney of SQLskills shows how to measure your network so you have more ammo to take to your network team when there is a performance issue.
Blogs
The SUM of Nothing: #SQLNewBlogger
By Steve Jones
I caught this interesting item over on Pinal Dave’s blog: Eleven Interview Questions that...
How to Move the SSMS Status Bar to the Top and Color-Code SQL Server Connections
By Hemantgiri
I use color-coded connections in SSMS to distinguish Production, Pre-Production, UAT, and Development. But...
Forums
Split Large Queries in Athena with a Simple Modulo Trick
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Split Large Queries in Athena...
Finding Trailing Spaces
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Finding Trailing Spaces
Question of the Day
Finding Trailing Spaces
I have some data in a SQL Server 2025 database. It looks like this for the dbo.Customer table:
CustomerID CustomerName PreferredName 1 Steve Steve 2 Andy Andy 3 Brian Brian 4 Allan Allan 5 Devin Devin 6 Steve Steve 7 Sally SallyI want to detect which names have a single trailing space. The CustomerName is a varchar() and the PreferredName is a CHAR(). Does this query detect the problem rows?
SELECT
CustomerID,
CustomerName,
PreferredName
FROM Customer
WHERE CustomerName <> RTRIM(CustomerName)
OR PreferredName <> RTRIM(PreferredName); See possible answers