External Article

SQL Monitor Custom Metric: Top Buffer Cache Object

This metric measures the amount of memory used in the buffer cache by the largest object (based on the number of pages). It checks the sys.dm_os_buffer_descriptors to identify the object, and returns the relative percentage used. You should use this metric if you want to monitor what is in the buffer area, or if you are having performance-related disk read problems.

Technical Article

Telemetry basics and troubleshooting

From the MSDN Windows Azure blog - We recently introduced Azure CAT team series of blog posts and tech articles describing the Cloud Service Fundamentals in Windows Azure code project posted on MSDN Code Gallery. The first component we are addressing in this series is Telemetry. This has been one of the first reusable components we have built working on Windows Azure customer projects of all sizes.

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