How to Receive Alerts When You Centralize Your SQL Server Event Logs
Learn how you can get alerts when you centralize the Event log. This is part 2 of the previous article "How to centralize your SQL Server Event Logs."
No Handwaving Away the DBA
Steve Jones doesn't think that companies can just do away with a DBA. Apparently there are people on the NoSQL platform that agree.
Improve SSIS data flow buffer performance
In this tip we have a very simple data flow using a source query with a predictable duration. The data flow takes longer to process all the rows and even larger buffers didn't make the problem go away. What can be the cause of this and how do we solve this? Koen Verbeeck explains.
Managers
Steve Jones thinks that the attitudes of managers need to change if we want to be more productive in the future.
12 SQL Server XML Questions You Were Too Shy To Ask
Robert Sheldon answers 12 questions about XML, including situations you would want to use XML, and how to do basic tasks.
Context Is Everything - Check Your Settings
Check 96 server and database settings to make sure they match your expectations in your databases with this script.
Vocation or Career
Do you have a vocation or career? Steve Jones talks a bit about the difference today.
How column COLLATION can affect SQL Server query performance
Most DBAs, myself included, install SQL Server with the default server collation SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS and all of our table columns get created using this default setting. This tip will look at the performance impacts of querying data with this setting as it compares to querying columns with the collation set to SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CS_AS.
SQL Saturday #306: Redmond
On May 31, 2014 SQL Saturday is coming to Redmond, Washington. Come for a free day of SQL Server training and networking, the schedule currently features tracks on T-SQL, SSIS, Backup & Recovery and more. Register while space is available.
Better, Faster, and Cheaper
When building a system, you need to make choices. However, do you always need to make the choice of only two of the three "good, fast, or cheap" choices? Andy Warren has a few thoughts.
Blogs
Learning from Mistakes: T-SQL Tuesday #194
By Steve Jones
We’re a week late, once again my fault. I was still coming out of...
Stupid Things I Did With AI: ASCII Art
By Steve Jones
I ran across this article recently (https://www.gatesnotes.com/meet-bill/source-code/reader/microsoft-original-source-code) and it has a great opening piece...
Simple Talks Podcasting in 2026
By Steve Jones
I’m in the UK today, having arrived this morning in London. Hopefully, by this...
Forums
Learning From Breakage
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Learning From Breakage
Python in Action to Auto-Generate an Optimized PostgreSQL Index Strategy
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Python in Action to Auto-Generate...
Adding and Dropping Columns I
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Adding and Dropping Columns I
Question of the Day
Adding and Dropping Columns I
I have this table in my SQL Server 2022 database:
CREATE TABLE [dbo].[CityList] ( [CityNameID] [int] NOT NULL IDENTITY(1, 1), [CityName] [varchar] (30) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS NULL ) ON [PRIMARY] GOI decide to add two new columns for the StateProvince and Country. What code should I use? See possible answers