A Check and Foreign Key Constraint Improves Query Performance
Check and foreign key constraint do not degrade performance but actually improve it.
The Vacation Dilemma
Does vacation cause extra stress at your job before or after you leave? Steve Jones asks a poll question this Friday to see how you feel. This editorial was originally published on June 12, 2008. It is being re-run as Steve is traveling.
Registration is open for SQL Relay
SQL Relay is an annual community-run series of SQL Server training events across the UK. SQL Relay will run 8, 1-day conferences over the course of 2 weeks starting June 17th. Speakers from Microsoft, global IT companies, and a host of MVPs, are covering topics on DBA, business intelligence, and development.
Unpack an Integer with SQL Server Recursion
Starting with SQL Server 2005, developers have had recursion available as a T-SQL language feature. This article describes recursion and its SQL Server implementations, complete with examples. It also includes SQL Server functions and a stored procedure that unpacks, or parses, an integer into its multiple-of-two components.
Find the Currently Running Scheduled Job
Ever need to automatically stop a long running job? Ever need to find which named Schedule is the currently running version of your job? There's simple code that'll let you find out.
Flight Data
Travel can be stressful and complicated. As much as computer systems have made things easier, when they fail, your trip can turn awful in a hurry.
Solving Complex T-SQL Problems, Step-By-Step
What should you do if your first, most intuitive solution to a problem ends up scanning the data more than is necessary, resulting in poor performance? Have you missed a new SQL Server feature that can remove inefficiency from your technique? Alternatively, do you need a little help, and some lateral thinking, to open the path to a different approach? Sometimes, the answer is "both".
Natural Data
Can you own data itself or patent it? There's a Supreme Court case dealing with this right now. Steve Jones notes that the outcome could affect our jobs as we deal with more and more data and laws to control data are enacted.
Custom Metrics for Monitoring Database Mirroring
SQL Monitor comes with plenty of metrics, but there are always going to be things that you want to measure that can't be done 'out of the box'. Taking database mirroring as an example, Grant shows that custom metrics can be used to monitor and alert whatever aspect of SQL Server or database that you need.
Using FULL JOINs to Compare Datasets
This article describes a technique of using FULL JOINs to compare two datasets within a numerical tolerance.
Blogs
Shifting Mindsets: Why FinOps is Essential for Cloud Efficiency
By HeyMo0sh
As a DevOps practitioner, I’ve always focused on performance, scalability, and automation. But as...
March 2026 SQL Server Security Updates
By Brian Kelley
On Patch Tuesday, in addition to OS and Office security patches, Microsoft also released...
How Fabric Mirroring Transformed with SQL Server 2025
When mirroring was first released for Azure SQL Database, it used Change Data Capture...
Forums
Multiple Deployment Processes
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How to Use sqlpackage to Detect Schema Drift Between Azure SQL Databases
Comments posted to this topic are about the item How to Use sqlpackage to...
Upgrading Admin Queries
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Question of the Day
Upgrading Admin Queries
I have a query from a former DBA that we run on SQL Server 2025 to check on database metadata. This query references sys.sysaltfiles. I want to refactor this code to be more modern. Which DMV should I reference instead?
See possible answers