The importance of backups
I have been selected to present a second session for the PASS Summit in November this year. I wrote a few weeks ago about the Linux Learning Path and being a part of that, so…
Containers and data: you gotta keep ’em separated
There was an interesting conversation on Twitter recently, between Grant Fritchey (blog | twitter), Kenneth Fisher (blog | twitter), Anthony E. Nocentino (blog | twitter), Vicky Harp (twitter), and me about containers and SQL Server.…
My IT department installed an antivirus with SQL Server
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 talking about “antivirus” and what that means in today’s world.…
Using a home-grown Azure Blob Storage solution for SQL Server backups
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 one-person consultancy. I’ve built stuff that’s useful to me, and…
It’s a UNIX system. I know this.
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 film lines, many of which came from Jeff “Dreamboat” Goldblum.…
Proposed SQL Server defaults: disable lightweight pooling
(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 Server instances. Set cost threshold for parallelism to 50 Disable…
When the buffer pool isn’t just in memory
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 to leverage the best performance from computing hardware. Temperature Before…
Speaking at SQLBits in March 2019
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 2 March 2019. My session is called An overview of…
Flagrantly ignoring the 10% rule
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 restricts you to, you’re doing it wrong. After a recent…
Bulk insert issue with UTF-8 fixed-width file format
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 a file in UTF-8 format. What this means is that…
Why you should not use SELECT *
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 was both amusing and accurate. Amusing, because a number of…
Dates and Times in SQL Server: T-SQL functions to get the current date and time
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 the best possible database. You can read more about that…
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 times in a more intelligent way than the DATETIME and SMALLDATETIME…
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 times in a more intelligent way than the DATETIME and SMALLDATETIME…
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 times in a more intelligent way than the DATETIME and SMALLDATETIME…