There was an interesting conversation on Twitter recently, between Grant Fritchey (blog | twitter), Kenneth Fisher (blog | twitter), Anthony E. Nocentino (blog | twitter),… Read More »Containers and data: you gotta keep ’em separated
Time for another short blog post, and this one combines two topics I am very passionate about: security, and SQL Server performance. Let’s start by… Read More »My IT department installed an antivirus with SQL Server
I’m here for the small organizations, the shops that can’t afford expensive solutions to maintain their environments. I’m here for them because that’s me: the… Read More »Using a home-grown Azure Blob Storage solution for SQL Server backups
Jurassic Park was a great film. Steven Spielberg brought technology into the film era in a major way with computer generated dinosaurs and some now-classic… Read More »It’s a UNIX system. I know this.
(This post was updated on 5 February 2022.) A few months ago I suggested that the following settings should be the default for most SQL… Read More »Proposed SQL Server defaults: disable lightweight pooling
Last time we looked at the four major components of a computer system, and then looked at the SQL Server buffer pool as a way… Read More »When the buffer pool isn’t just in memory
I have been selected to speak for a second time at SQLBits, which is being hosted in Manchester UK this year from 27 February to… Read More »Speaking at SQLBits in March 2019
My friend Michael J. Swart has a rule of thumb he calls Swart’s Ten Percent Rule. If you’re using over 10% of what SQL Server… Read More »Flagrantly ignoring the 10% rule
Fellow Canadian Doran Douglas brought this issue to my attention recently, and I wanted to share it with you as well. Let’s say you have… Read More »Bulk insert issue with UTF-8 fixed-width file format
A shorter post this week, but an important one. Last week, Erik Darling commented on my post saying that we shouldn’t use SELECT *, which… Read More »Why you should not use SELECT *
We have come on quite a journey so far. SQL Server and Azure SQL Database provide date and time data types to help you design… Read More »Dates and Times in SQL Server: T-SQL functions to get the current date and time
This post continues our look at date and time data types in SQL Server. SQL Server 2008 introduced new data types to handle dates and… Read More »Dates and Times in SQL Server: DATETIMEOFFSET
This post continues our look at date and time data types in SQL Server. SQL Server 2008 introduced new data types to handle dates and… Read More »Dates and Times in SQL Server: DATETIME2
This post continues our look at date and time data types in SQL Server. SQL Server 2008 introduced new data types to handle dates and… Read More »Dates and Times in SQL Server: TIME
This post continues our look at date and time data types in SQL Server. SQL Server 2008 introduced new data types to handle dates and… Read More »Dates and Times in SQL Server: DATE