SQL Saturday #244 Johannesburg
SQL Saturday is coming to Johannesburg, South Africa on Saturday, September 14 2013. Join us for a free day of SQL Server training and networking.
Techniques For Improving SQL Query Performance - Indexing, Parameterization and Partitioning
You are tasked with examining poor performance for queries on a certain table, or range of tables. Perhaps a sales report is timing out or running unacceptably slow; perhaps your web application is failing to return the result set before the application timeout is reached. You need to find out what's causing the bottleneck, and optimize either the queries used, the table schemata, or both.
Good and Bad Interview Questions
Are there good and bad interview questions? Are there some you prefer or hate? Steve Jones comments on some of the strange ones out there and how hiring is changing.
Monitoring job history using Reporting Services
Easily monitoring your SQL Agent job history using SSRS for concurrency, job lenght and job status.
Getting Data between Excel and SQL Server using ODBC
With ODBC, you can summarise, and select just the data you need, in an Excel workbook before importing it into SQL Server. You can join data from different areas or worksheets. You can even get data from the result of a SQL Server SELECT statement into an Excel spreadsheet. Phil Factor shows how, and warns of some of the pitfalls.
It's not you; it's us
The announcement that the MCM program was being discontinued brings us a few thoughts from Gail Shaw, one of the 0.08% to achieve the certification.
New Enhanced Column Store Index in SQL Server 2014 – Part 1
Column Store Index, which improves performance of data warehouse queries several folds, was first introduced in SQL Server 2012. Unlike regular indexes or heaps, which store data in B-Tree structure (in row-wise fashion), the column store index stores data in columnar fashion and uses compression aggressively to reduce the disk I/O needed to serve the query request. In this article, Arshad Ali talks about the new enhanced columnstore index feature in SQL Server 2014.
Opportunity for Business Intelligence developer
Red Gate is looking for a Business Intelligence Developer to work with our internal development team on creating business intelligence solutions. You'll be responsible for designing, building, and testing end-to-end BI solutions using the Microsoft BI stack, so we'll expect you to be passionate about understanding data and generating a universe of analytics for your customers – our Red Gaters.
Sensor Data
The availability of cheap sensors brings with it lots of possibilities and concerns. However there is one certainty: more data.
Variable Default Values to a Stored Procedure (SQL Spackle)
A way to assign variable and overrideable defaults to input parameters to an SP or FUNCTION using a configurations table.
Blogs
Redgate and Rome
By Steve Jones
I’m at the UK Redgate office today, meeting with senior leaders in all areas...
Quick Tip: Check Most DTU Expensive Queries in Azure SQL Database
Optimizing Azure SQL Database performance often begins with identifying the most resource-intensive queries. Understanding...
PowerShell Newbie – Variables
By gbargsley
This is Week 2 of PowerShell Strikes Back – a four-week May series for...
Forums
SSRS Is Dead. Here Are Your Real Options
Comments posted to this topic are about the item SSRS Is Dead. Here Are...
The Distance Metric
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Distance Metric
The New Wave of Security Threats
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The New Wave of Security...
Question of the Day
The Distance Metric
In the new VECTOR_DISTANCE() function in SQL Server 2025, the first parameter is the distance_metric. What is this?
See possible answers