Last year I had a health scare that got my blood pressure at 200-and-something over 100-and-something, soon to be wired up to an IV drip,… Read More »I don’t blog anymore, but not because I work at Microsoft
T-SQL Tuesday is a fantastic series of blog posts derived from over 130 topics over the past 11 years, inviting bloggers to share their thoughts… Read More »The T-SQL Tuesday Corollary
Erik Darling, of Erik Darling Data (blog | Twitter) recently posted a very interesting video (my YouTube playlist is all Erik Darling Data videos and… Read More »Remember this if you want to use sp_
After last week’s post about using WITH (NOEXPAND) to query indexed views even on SQL Server Enterprise Edition, this week is a short but interesting… Read More »Using indexed views? What is an imprecise or non-deterministic convert?
Today after fighting with designing a view that let me create a clustered index on it (indexed views — also known as materialized views — are awesome… Read More »Using indexed views? Don’t forget this important tip.
(This post was updated on 1 August 2022.) A few months ago I suggested that the following settings should be the default for most SQL… Read More »Proposed SQL Server defaults: max server memory
A short post this week. On a mailing list recently, someone noticed that a .NET application writing to SQL Server did not have the expected… Read More »The easy way to handle UTF-8 in a .NET application when dealing with SQL Server 2019
On Thursday May 2nd, 2019, Microsoft announced a new edition of SQL Server targeting Internet of Things (IoT) edge devices. That means SQL Server can… Read More »A short Azure SQL Edge explainer
Here’s an interesting story for you this week. As part of the new Intelligent Query Processing improvements introduced in the upcoming SQL Server 2019, we… Read More »The case of scalar UDF inlining, where context is everything
(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: optimize for ad hoc workloads
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
Earlier this month I released a new, free tool to export SQL Server query data to Excel files without needing Excel. It also installs stored procedures… Read More »The free SQL to Excel Export tool
A few months ago, Microsoft announced that SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) will no longer include the visual Database Diagrams feature from v18.0 onward. [Edit:… Read More »Database modelling in a post-SSMS world: dbForge Studio
While working on my Swart’s Ten Percent Rule post last week, I needed to test the Windows version of the script on my SQL Server… Read More »Some databases may show a NULL collation in the sys.databases DMV
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