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My home office setup
That aging hippie (he likes Apple products and has a goatee) known as Brent Ozar wrote a post recently about his home office studio setup, with a big focus on bragging about his admittedly really nice Mac Pro online training. I don’t do online training, but for some reason there’s a lot of interest in
-> Continue reading My home office setup
Don’t install SQL Server from a mounted ISO
Here’s something that seems to keep coming up, but not frequently enough for me to write a blog post about until now: You should not install SQL Server from a mounted ISO file. Instead, you should extract the contents of the ISO file first before installing it. In June 2019 I tweeted: […] some ISO
-> Continue reading Don’t install SQL Server from a mounted ISO
The curious case of the sqlcmd password
In August last year I posted about a command line parser problem I ran into with AzCopy, which I eventually resolved by writing a batch file and escaping a number of characters in the access token. A week ago, my friend and colleague Steve Stedman (blog | Twitter) came to me with a similar problem
-> Continue reading The curious case of the sqlcmd password
Looking ahead to 2020
This week all I want to say is Happy New Year, and may 2020 be the start of a successful decade for you. Live, love, learn. Remember to take some time off to play. Thank you for continuing to read my ramblings.
Temporal Tables, and how to deal with computed columns
Long time readers will know I’m a big fan of Temporal Tables since their introduction in SQL Server 2016. Thanks to my friend Erik Darling (blog | Twitter), I can share a tip when dealing with computed columns. As I say in my Back to the future with Temporal Tables session, there are several limitations
-> Continue reading Temporal Tables, and how to deal with computed columns
Compression in SQL Server: COMPRESS and DECOMPRESS
On Twitter recently, I asked: Does anyone I know use the COMPRESS and DECOMPRESS features in T-SQL? To those who replied in the affirmative, I asked: What made you decide on this as opposed to ROW or PAGE compression? Joey D’Antoni (blog | Twitter), one of my co-authors, reminded me that row and page compression do
-> Continue reading Compression in SQL Server: COMPRESS and DECOMPRESS
A guide to acronyms, abbreviations, and other technical terms
Here’s a list of some technical terms, acronyms, and abbreviations you may have heard, and what they mean. Some of the definitions are taken from Wikipedia. This list is incomplete. It’s also not in alphabetical order. Mainframe: on-demand computing resources, usually paid for using a subscription model Distributed computing: distributed system components connected by a
-> Continue reading A guide to acronyms, abbreviations, and other technical terms
The XML data type is not immutable
Immutability In many programming languages, strings of text are immutable, meaning they don’t change. When you modify a string, a new string is created in memory by copying the original. The old string stays in memory unless some process removes it. This might be a manual process of de-allocating that memory, or garbage collection if
-> Continue reading The XML data type is not immutable
Is it true that editing a single row in Management Studio empties and reloads the entire table?
TL;DR: No. A customer recently brought up an interesting thesis, that if you edit a table’s values using SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) using the edit feature, that the table is dropped and recreated in the background when you commit the changes. This is false, but there had to be a good reason why they
-> Continue reading Is it true that editing a single row in Management Studio empties and reloads the entire table?
Installing SQL Server on Windows? Don’t forget these two useful switches
A few days ago on Twitter I wrote: Couldn’t connect to new SQL Server install because I forgot to enable TCP/IP. I’m the lead author for a Microsoft Press book about SQL Server administration. Aside from demonstrating that checklists are helpful, it did raise an interesting point about why this isn’t a configurable option in
-> Continue reading Installing SQL Server on Windows? Don’t forget these two useful switches