Premature Optimisation
Learning how to tune a system is a bit of science and a bit of an art. Gail Shaw gives some guidelines on when you might want to tune and how to go about it so as not to unnecessarily undertake the effort.
Watson Freemium
IBM has released a free version of its Watson service to help people perform analytics on their data.
Prevent Confidential Data at the Application Layer from getting into SQL Server
In this tip Tim Smith looks at different approaches to stop confidential data from getting into the database.
Hierarchies on Steroids #1: Convert an Adjacency List to Nested Sets
SQL Server MVP Jeff Moden shows us a new very high performance method to convert an "Adjacency List" to “Nested Sets” on a million node hierarchy in less than a minute and 100,000 nodes in just seconds. Not surprisingly, the "steroids" come in a bottle labeled "Tally Table".
No Compelling Reason
Steve Jones wants to know if you have compelling reasons to upgrade or not upgrade this week.
A TDD Journey: 3- Mocks vs. Stubs; Test Frameworks; Assertions; ReSharper Accelerators
Test-Driven Development (TDD) involves the repetition of a very short development cycle that begins with an initially-failing test that defines the required functionality, and ends with producing the minimum amount of code to pass that test, and finally refactoring the new code. Michael Sorens continues his introduction to TDD by implementing the first tests and introducing the topics of Test doubles; Test Runners, Constraints and Assertions.
Data Mining Part 17: Working with Reports
In this chapter, we will learn how to create Data Mining Reports using Reporting Services.
Data Mining Part 17: Working with Reports
In this chapter, we will learn how to create Data Mining Reports using Reporting Services.
The 10 (.5) Commandments for IT Professionals
A list of the commandments, or at least suggestions, that Simon Holzman sees as important for IT professionals.
Azure Virtual Machines Part 0: A VM Primer
Mike Martin kicks off his series on Azure Virtual Machines with a primer, full of background and terms. To fully understand the Azure Virtual Machines offering, Mike explains how everything is connected and co-existing.
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?
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