Robert Sheldon SQL Server Tables – 11 Questions You Were Too Shy to Ask There are some aspects of tables in SQL Server that a lot of people get wrong, purely because they seem... 18 June 2014 35 min read
Tony Davis Database Branching and Merging Strategies Source control will allow you to maintain branches in the development of your database, but the subsequent merge isn't pain-free.... 18 June 2014 23 min read
David Poole Experiments with NEO4J: Using a graph database as a SQL Server metadata hub NEO4J, the graph database, can be used to provide answers that are very tricky for relational databases, including providing diagrams... 17 June 2014 18 min read
Jonathan Hickford Using Migration Scripts in Database Deployments A SQL migration script is similar to a SQL build script, except that it changes a database from one version... 17 June 2014 20 min read
Jonathan Lewis Execution Plans Part 6: Pushed Subqueries In part 5 of this series we examined a couple of examples where you had to handle the “first child... 16 June 2014 10 min read
David Njoku Oracle for Absolute Beginners: Part 7 – Creating Tables, Constraints and Triggers A wise man once said: start at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop.... 10 June 2014 9 min read
Kalen Delaney Row Versioning Concurrency in SQL Server The optimistic concurrency model assumes that several concurrent transactions can usually complete without interfering with each other, and therefore do... 05 June 2014 44 min read
Joe Celko The SQL of The Game of Life Joe finds a reference to Conway's Game of Life whilst clearing out his desk, and is suddenly gripped with nostalgia.... 05 June 2014 7 min read
Phil Factor On Comparing Tables in SQL Server How do you compare two SQL tables? Every SQL Developer or DBA knows the answer, which is 'it depends'. It... 29 May 2014 20 min read
Jonathan Lewis Execution Plans part 5: First Child Variations I’ve offered up “first child first, recursive descent” as a basic strategy for interpreting execution plans – but it’s not... 28 May 2014 14 min read
Saurabh Dhoble Setting Up Your SQL Server Agent Correctly It is important to set up SQL Server Agent Security on the principles of 'executing with minimum privileges', and ensure... 28 May 2014 15 min read
Randolf Geist Parallel Execution Skew – 12c Hybrid Hash Distribution With Skew Detection Since Parallel Execution Skew is a common problem that can severely limit the scalability of Parallel Execution (see my previous... 19 May 2014 9 min read
Robert Sheldon TSQL User-Defined Functions: Ten Questions You Were Too Shy To Ask SQL Server User-Defined Functions are good to use in most circumstances, but there just a few questions that rarely get... 19 May 2014 31 min read
Joshua Feierman On Adopting the Mindset of an Enterprise DBA Although many of the important tasks a DBA has to perform should be done 'by hand', keying in commands or... 19 May 2014 11 min read
Jonathan Lewis Execution Plans Part 4: Precision and Timing In part 3 of this series we used a simple hash join to introduce the a simple guideline for reading... 14 May 2014 12 min read
Database Administration Tony Davis in Database Administration Optimizing Transaction Log Throughput As a DBA, it is vital to manage transaction log growth explicitly, rather than let SQL Server auto-growth events "manage"... 08 May 2014 35 min read
David Njoku Oracle for Absolute Beginners: Part 6 – Procedures and Functions A wise man once said, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results. If... 07 May 2014 13 min read
Phil Factor Producing JSON Documents from SQL Server queries via TSQL Although SQL Server supports XML well, XML's little cousin JSON gets no love. This is frustrating now that JSON is... 06 May 2014 24 min read
Houri SPM Plan: non reproducibility circumstances and CBO interaction 1. Introduction When a critical report which used to complete very quickly starts performing poorly, there is a big chance... 01 May 2014 17 min read
Dwain Camps The Performance of Traversing a SQL Hierarchy Dwain Camps show that, depending on the size and characteristics of some hierarchical data, six different methods of traversal can... 28 April 2014 16 min read
