Software Projects: the important boring bits
Phil Factor on the sort of boring expertise that will help you thrive as a consultant.
We Still Need Human Judgment
Computers aren't necessarily more infallible than humans, and they aren't necessarily even going to make better decisions. We still need humans in the decision process.
How to troubleshoot SSL encryption issues in SQL Server
Tibor Nagy explains how to find the root cause of SSL encryption configuration problems in Microsoft SQL Server.
Overcoming Proposal Objections
We have all had our innovative solutions and proposals shot down by leads, managers and directors. This article addresses some of the causes and tips to improving the success rate for getting your ideas into the priority list.
What, When and who? Auditing 101
In this article we will take a look at one of the new technology that was introduced in SQL Server 2008 for Auditing.
The SQL Scrabble Puzzle
An enhancement to a Phil Factor puzzle gives you a chance to play scrabble in T-SQL.
Webinar: Performance Tuning .NET & SQL Code Using ANTS Performance Profiler
In this LIDNUG webinar, Mitchel Sellers walks through performance tuning best practices, and investigates how developers can use ANTS Performance Profiler to explore their application code and the SQL queries and execution plans behind it.
Monitor Database Growth and Usage
Create a repository of all your database devices and stay informed about changes in their size and usage.
What Have You Learned Lately?
Have you learned anything new lately? Steve Jones asks the question after an interesting T-SQL Tuesday.
Bitwise Operations in T-SQL
How can you get a list of columns that have changed within a trigger in T-SQL? How can you see what bits are set within a varbinary or integer? How would you pass a bitmap parameter to a system stored procedure? Phil Factor has answers.
Blogs
Automated SQL Server Benchmarking with HammerDB and Docker: A Complete Testing Framework
I’m excited to announce the release of a new open-source project that fully automates...
T-SQL Snapshot Backups on Availability Group Secondary Replicas
One of my favourite features of SQL Server 2022 was the T-SQL Snapshot Backups....
The Book of Redgate: Hours
By Steve Jones
I have said and written this many times: Redgate Software is the type of...
Forums
Optional Parameter Plan Optimization in SQL Server 2025: Fixing the Kitchen-Sink Search Procedure
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Optional Parameter Plan Optimization in...
AI Experience Gap that we keep talking about
Comments posted to this topic are about the item AI Experience Gap that we...
Question of the Day
ORDER BY alias
There is a table tmp_tab:
CREATE TABLE tmp_tab ( id int, val int );
INSERT INTO tmp_tab VALUES (1, 1), (2, NULL), (3, 3), (4, 4), (5, 5);You want to order the rows ids by the following expression:
ISNULL(val, id) + 1Which of the following queries produces the expected ordering and why? (Select all correct) See possible answers