Greg Larsen

Greg started working in the computer industry in 1982. In 1985, he got his first DBA job, and since then he has held six different DBA jobs and managed a number of different database management systems. Greg has moved on from being a full-time DBA and is now an adjunct professor at St. Martins University and does part-time consulting work. He has published numerous articles in SQL Server Magazine, and many online web sites dedicated to SQL Server. He is a former SQL Server MVP and holds a number of Microsoft Certification. Greg can be reached at gregalarsen@msn.com.

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20 July 2020
20 July 2020

Transact-SQL: The Building Blocks to SQL Server Programming by Gregory A. Larsen

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Transact SQL (TSQL) is the languaged used to query and update data stored in a SQL Server. This book, written by Simple Talk author Greg Larsen, will give developers an understanding of the basics of the TSQL language. Programmers will have the building blocks necessary to quickly and easily build applications that use SQL Server. … Read more
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26 May 2020
26 May 2020

Improve Row Count Estimates for Table Variables without Changing Code

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Table variables can cause performance issues with joins when they contain a large number of rows. In SQL Server 2019, Microsoft has improved how the optimizer works with table variables which can improve performance without making changes to your code. In this article, Greg Larsen explains how this feature works and if it really does make a difference.… Read more
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05 March 2019
05 March 2019

Resumable Online Index Create and Rebuild Operations

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Index maintenance can be a real headache for database administrators as tables grow larger and maintenance windows shrink. In this article, Greg Larsen demonstrates resumable index operations available with SQL Server 2017 and 2019. This feature helps DBAs work around those small maintenance windows by allowing certain index operations to be paused and restarted again later.… Read more
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07 January 2019
07 January 2019

Protecting SQL Server Data Using Static Data Masking

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In order to protect data and comply with regulations such as the GDPR and HIPAA, databases used by developers and testers must not contain private and sensitive data from production databases. To help DBAs protect data, Microsoft have released a new feature as part of SSMS called Static Data Masking. In this article, Greg Larsen demonstrates how to use this new feature.… Read more
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26 April 2012
26 April 2012

SQL Server Transaction Log Fragmentation: a Primer

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Generally, you will have no need to worry about the number of virtual log files in your transaction log. However, if you use the default settings for 'auto-grow', you can end up with such 'fragmentation' in your transaction log as to affect performance noticably. How can this be avoided? How can you tell it's a problem? What do you do about it? Greg explains.… Read more
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