Visualizing in Space
An amazing visualization of basketball players has Steve Jones encouraging you to find your own pet project and showcase some skills.
The Importance of Maintenance on MSDB
MSDB is a system database used by SQL Server. MSDB stores all sorts of data, such as backup history, log shipping monitor history, SSIS packages and Service Broker queue data to name a few. Just like user databases, MSDB needs regular maintenance, including index optimizations and, more importantly, regular purging. In this article, Tim Radney looks at how neglecting your MSDB can negatively impact on your environment.
Learning Backup to Azure
References and links to get you started in backing up your database to the Azure blob storage.
No Downtime Deployments
Can you deploy your database changes without any downtime? Steve Jones has a few notes.
What We Want and What We'll Pay For
The challenges of getting enough resources for our projects aren't always apparent.
Can Code Review Be Automated?
Code must be checked, but how? Phil Factor shares his thoughts on automating SQL code reviews.
Is Skynet Coming?
The poll this week looks to the future and artificial intelligence. Steve Jones wonders if we'll ever really see this.
SAN and NAS protocols and how they impact SQL Server
Discusses the various SAN and NAS protocols (FC, iSCSI, NFS) and how choosing one over the other can impact your SQL Server Performance.
SQL Explained
A short explanation and infographic of what SQL is. For the non-SQL people in your life.
SQL Style Habits: Attack of the Skeuomorphs
Although we like to think that our programming techniques are progressive and in tune with the bleeding edge of software development practices, too often they are directly influenced by restrictions faced when computers first became mainstream in the post-war decades. In this article Joe Celko looks at the history of mainframes, FORTRAN I and COBOL.
Blogs
Upgrading SQL Server Containers on the Laptop
By Steve Jones
I don’t have SQL Server installed on my laptop. In an effort to keep...
How to Find Expensive Queries in Amazon Redshift
Slow-running queries can degrade your Redshift cluster’s performance and lead to increased costs. Identifying...
The Notification Trap: How Input Fatigue Is Killing Deep Work in Tech
By gbargsley
If you've been here before, you know this blog is usually about SQL Server,...
Forums
SQL 2019 instance with AG, across 2 Windows 2016 OS servers - OSin-place upgrade
Hi all Can I get some perspective from the community please on performing in-place...
How Long is a Long I/O?
Comments posted to this topic are about the item How Long is a Long...
T-SQL Trigonometric Functions in SQL Server
Comments posted to this topic are about the item T-SQL Trigonometric Functions in SQL...
Question of the Day
How Long is a Long I/O?
In SQL Server 2025, a long I/O is recorded in the error log with message 833. How long much an I/O request be outstanding before this message is written to the log?
See possible answers