External Article

Seven SQL Server Under-Used Utilities

There are many useful command-line applications that are either associated with, or are distributed with, SQL Server. They all have their uses and several become important as part of script-based automation of tasks. It is definitely worth knowing what is lurking in your tools\binn directory.

Technical Article

SQL Saturday #287 - Madison, WI

SQL Saturday is coming to Madison on March 29, 2014. This is a free training event for SQL Server professionals and those wanting to learn about SQL Server. Steve Jones and many others will be presenting, so make sure you register early to secure your place.

SQLServerCentral Editorial

A True SQL OS

SQL Server is so large and complex that it's like an operating system. In fact, there the core engine is often referred to as the "SQL OS" by Microsoft developers. Steve Jones would like to see SQL Server as it's own OS at some point.

Technical Article

Worst Day as a DBA

Survey - The DBA-Team wants to hear about your worst day as a DBA. Did a database restore fail due to corruption? Did you accidentally connect to Prod instead of Dev and truncate a table? Anonymity available. The best story will win a $50 Amazon voucher.

Blogs

T-SQL Tuesday #202 SQL Server Outage You’ll Never Forget: A Roundup

By

When I put together the invitation for T-SQL Tuesday #202, I wasn't sure what...

A Last Minute Trip to the EU

By

My life has some crazy travel stretches for sure. Between speaking, office visits, customer...

Part 3 of 3: Tuning DiskANN — R, Alpha, L, Beam Width, Recall and Latency

By

In Part 1, we saw how ‘Vamana’ represents vectors as nodes, connects them with...

Read the latest Blogs

Forums

Server-Level Table sizes

By Artur Sanin

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Server-Level Table sizes

ORDER BY alias

By aniap

Comments posted to this topic are about the item ORDER BY alias

Optional Parameter Plan Optimization in SQL Server 2025: Fixing the Kitchen-Sink Search Procedure

By vgupta

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Optional Parameter Plan Optimization in...

Visit the forum

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) + 1
Which of the following queries produces the expected ordering and why? (Select all correct)

See possible answers