COALESCE in SQL Server
Sandeep Mittal provides an introduction to the COALESCE function and shows how to use it.
Hadoop many flavors of SQL
What are the most popular SQL implementations for Hadoop? How different are they from T-SQL?
The Biggest Data Breach (For Now)
JP Morgan suffers the largest data breach for a financial institution, but Steve Jones doesn't think this record will stand for long.
Azure SQL Database - Transparent Data Encryption
Transparent Data Encryption offers the ability to encrypt content of the database, its transaction logs, as well as backups while at rest. Encryption and decryption are performed in real-time, at the individual page level, as the database is being written to and read from storage, without necessitating changes to applications accessing their data. Marcin Policht reviews the feature.
Getting ready for Hadoop
Before adopting Hadoop into your organisation there are a number of factors to consider. This article highlights some of the key points.
SQL Server Heaps, and Their Fragmentation
In SQL Server, heaps are rightly treated with suspicion. Although there are rare cases where they perform well, they are likely to be the cause of poor performance. If a table is likely to have a large number of changes, then it can become fragmented due to way that space is allocated and forward pointers used. How does one detect this problem? Is it significant? How does one deal with it, if necessary? Neeraj Tripathi explains.
Early Adopters
Today we have a guest editorial from Andy Warren that looks at those that run software early in its lifecycle.
Using SQL Prompt to Accelerate the Top 10 Most Common Database Scripts
There may be some people who enjoy repetitive typing, but Grant Fritchey doesn't. He's always preferred SQL Prompt. The standard snippets suit developers fine but aren't so DBA-oriented, so he set about asking the SQLServerCentral community what they typed in the most, and set about producing a set of DBA snippets with the results.
Shrinking the Budget
Most DBAs don't get involved with budgets at work, but we are affected by them. Steve notes you might want to understand how budgets work.
Blogs
Advice I Like: Respect
By Steve Jones
“Don’t aim to have others like you; aim to have them respect you.” –...
Blue Sky Programming – The Optimism Trap
Many years ago, before I joined Oracle, I was working on a major modernisation...
Setting Up a Mac for Data Engineering and AI Work
If you work with data pipelines, SQL, notebooks, or machine learning models, a Mac...
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...
SQL Server Still Wins
Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Server Still Wins
DBCC CHECKDB Limits I
Comments posted to this topic are about the item DBCC CHECKDB Limits I
Question of the Day
DBCC CHECKDB Limits I
When running DBCC CHECKDB on SQL Server 2025, can I include the Resource Database?
See possible answers