This week we’re going to look at how numbers are stored. This post will cover integers (TINYINT, SMALLINT, INT, BIGINT), and decimals (DECIMAL, which is the same as NUMERIC). If you’d like to read the… How SQL Server stores data types: integers and decimals
A quick(er) post this week, in response to Greg Low’s blog post from a few weeks ago titled “Don’t start identity columns or sequences with large negative values.” Greg writes that you shouldn’t use large… Negative identity values don’t suck
In 2018, I entered Speaker Idol at the PASS Summit, and because I forgot to start my timer I was disqualified for running over the five-minute limit (say “five-minute limit” fast ten times in a… PASS Summit 2020 pre-con time
This post dives into how SQL Server stores date and time data types in memory and on disk. But first, a note about endianness: CPUs manufactured by Intel and other vendors process binary values in… How SQL Server stores data types: dates and times
Erik Darling, of Erik Darling Data (blog | Twitter) recently posted a very interesting video (my YouTube playlist is all Erik Darling Data videos and Honest Trailers). In this video he demonstrates an easily repeatable… Remember this if you want to use sp_
I will be presenting a session to the Adelaide SQL Server User Group on April 15th, 2020, and if you’re awake at that time (it’ll be 9pm on April 14th for me), you’re welcome to… Join me (virtually) in Adelaide!
WARNING: This post contains information that can get you fired if you use it without express written permission. In some jurisdictions it might get you jail time as well. Let’s assume you are a consultant,… Picking up the pieces after the DBA has left: taking ownership of a SQL Server instance
Last year I released sql2xls, a free open-source tool which lets you throw a bunch of scripts into a folder, run them automatically against SQL Server and get the results back in a nicely-formatted Excel… sql2xls goes cross-platform
With entire countries shutting their borders, and people being forced to stay home and isolate themselves for as long as possible while health departments ramp up to handle this pandemic, the question of business continuity… On the continuity of business
I will be presenting a new session, “Database administration through the ages,” at SQL Saturday #950 in Victoria this coming weekend. This is one of my favourite SQL Saturdays of the year because I love… Join me in Victoria this Saturday
My co-authors and I recently wrapped up the book SQL Server 2019 Administration Inside Out, which should be hitting the shelves in the next week or two. At the end of Chapter 1 I have… Deprecated and discontinued features in SQL Server
(Last edited on March 11, 2020) The SQLBits conference, which was to take place in London between March 31st and April 4th, has been postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. SQLBits will now take place… Join me at SQLBits 2020 (maybe)
I just completed a chapter for another book where I spoke about the Recovery Point Objective (how much data you are prepared to lose) and Recovery Time Objective (how long you have to bring your… Disaster recovery, tools edition
“Dear speaker This serves as notice that your session submission was not selected for our upcoming event. We had a lot of sessions to sort through, and unfortunately there were not enough spots available to… Dealing with rejection
Welcome to February 2020. It’s the second month of the year 2020! I remember sitting at a server with SQL Server 6.5 installed on it, worrying about the Y2K bug. It feels like yesterday. While… I’m a DBA. Do I really need to know Kubernetes?