Custom Metric - Indexes with Excessive Writes
A new custom metric is available at SQL Monitor Metrics. This tracks indexes that have more writes than reads. Use this code if you want to find out if you might be over indexing your tables.
SQL Server 2012 Integration Services - Introduction to Managing SQL Server with PowerShell
Marcin Policht presents the fundamental principles of PowerShell in the context of SQL Server 2012. Join him as he steps through its initial setup and configuration, and reviews specific management areas where its advantages can be realized.
Stairway to XML: Level 9 - Creating XML-Based Functions
In this Level, we’ll look at how to use XML methods within user-defined functions to return XML fragments and values from your target XML instance.
The Knowledge Graph
Google has a new project to use a "database of everything" to help you learn more.
SQL Server Performance Tuning – Index Tuning
In earlier installments of this series we looked at T-SQL Performance optimizations along with different T-SQL practices, we can now turn our attention to the second part of this series which is index Tuning
Acing an Audit
Audits for technology groups can be time consuming and stress employees out. An article Steve Jones finds says an insurance company only needed 30 minutes to ace their audit.
My SQL Server Database is Corrupt - Now What?!
How do you recover from corruption if your organization doesn't have a disaster recovery handbook? And how can you prevent the same corruption from recurring?
Providing SQL Agent Job Log Data for Developers
As a production Database Administrator, I do not want to give Developers direct access to the SQL Server Agent job log especially for servers in the DMZ. Another problem we have is that when there is a lot of log data for a job, the default job log doesn't contain the full log detail and that makes it harder to troubleshoot. Most of all, we are trying not to use a different code set for deployment based on the environment. Basically we want to use the same methods to deploy our jobs to Development, Test and Production.
Not Pulling the Plug Out
Phil Factor on his renewed appreciation for the "customer-focused" culture of the Data Platform Group at Microsoft
Still 32
There is likely still a lot of 32-bit software out there, even as the x86 platform appears to be dying away. Steve Jones notes that you'll likely be dealing with 32/64 bit issues in your career.
Blogs
Learn Better: Pause to Review More
By Brian Kelley
If you want to learn better, pause more in your learning to intentionally review.
Azure SQL Managed Instance Next-Gen: Bring on the IOPS
By John
If you’ve used Azure SQL Managed Instance General Purpose, you know the drill: to...
SQL, MDX, DAX – the languages of data
By DataOnWheels
Ramblings of a retired data architect Let me start by saying that I have...
Forums
Two foreign keys to the same table. Can't cascade deletes.
Not sure if this is really a relational theory question but it seems about...
Connecting Power BI to SSAS and effective user not working
Hi everyone, Below is a consolidated summary of what we validated Architecture & data...
High Availability setup - has anyone seen this method?
Hi all, I recently moved to a new employer who have their HA setup...
Question of the Day
Encoding URLs
I have this data in a SQL Server 2025 table:
CREATE TABLE Response ( ResponseID INT NOT NULL CONSTRAINT ResponsePK PRIMARY KEY , ResponseVal VARBINARY(5000) ) GOIf I want to get a value from this table that I can add to a URL in a browser, which of these code items produces a result I can use? See possible answers