Taking Care of Things Today
Steve Jones talks about procrastination today and how you might not want to do that with your SQL Servers.
Untrusted Foreign Keys with NOT FOR REPLICATION Option on the Key
My Foreign Keys are STILL untrusted after the double CHECK. Here's how you can fix this issue.
Questions About Pivoting Data in SQL Server You Were Too Shy to Ask
Of all the basic SQL operations, the pivot seems to cause the most problems. It turns out that there are several questions that come to mind while learning about pivoting, but which are seldom asked on forums.
Returning Sorted Record Sets Using the ORDER BY Clause
Having your data returned to you in some meaningful sorted order is important sometimes. If you don’t tell SQL Server you want to order the results of a SELECT statement then there is no guarantee that your result set will come back in a particular order. To make sure a result set is ordered you need to use the ORDER BY clause. In this article I will be exploring how to return an order result set by using the ORDER BY clause.
A Little Empathy
Perspective makes a big difference and Steve Jones looks at how you might change the way you think about clients, customers, and the work you do.
Prevent sp_ Procedures with SQLCop
Learn how you can use SQLCop to prevent your developers from writing stored procedures that are named sp_ something.
Data Cleaning in SQL 2012 with Data Quality Services
Feodor Georgiev provides a thorough walkthrough on setting up SQL Server's Data Quality Services (DQS) and creating the rules it uses to function as a first step towards data cleansing.
Hadoop and SQL Server
Hadoop is a technology that's getting quite a bit of attention in the last few years, including integration with SQL Server. Steve Jones talks about the technology and how it might fit in your career.
Options to Improve SQL Server Bulk Load Performance
In this tip Ben Snaidero looks at how to improve SQL Server Bulk Load performance. He focuses his performance tests on options using the BULK INSERT T-SQL command to judge how the various options affect speed.
Blogs
A New Word: los vidados
By Steve Jones
los vidados – n. the half-remembered acquaintances you knew years ago, who you might...
In-Person CISA Training – April 13-16, 2026
By Brian Kelley
I will be leading an in-person Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) exam prep class...
EightKB 2026
EightKB is back again for 2026! The biggest online SQL Server internals conference is...
Forums
query to track time spent on individual tasks in SSIS
Hi everyone I am looking at building a query to determine how much time...
SQL Server Transactional Replication from Always On Availability Groups to Azure SQL Database
Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Server Transactional Replication from...
Hidden Heroes
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Hidden Heroes
Question of the Day
Identities and Sequences I
When thinking of the Identity property for auto incrementing columns and sequences for the same action, which are explicitly linked to increment a number in a table when a new row is added?
See possible answers