Execution Plans Part 12: Cardinality Feedback

In the previous instalment of this series I introduced three ways of accessing the run-time statistics for a query and...

13 January 2015 13 min read

Grant Fritchey

SQL Server Execution Plans for Developers: Query Tuning Guide by Grant Fritchey

Grant Fritchey explains why SQL Server developers need to read execution plans: identify N+1 problems from ORMs, diagnose poorly designed...

12 January 2015 31 min read

Feodor Georgiev

How to get ETL Horribly Wrong

ETL ( Extract, transform, load) doesn't have to be like a spell on hell. To make a success of ETL...

09 January 2015 14 min read

Joe Celko

Discrete and Continuous data in SQL

Not all data is discrete; some data types represent a continuum. In SQL, we have to approximate them and live...

06 January 2015 17 min read

Kathi Kellenberger

SQL Server Reporting Services Basics: Deploying Reports

Having designed and tested our reports, it's time to deploy them to the Report Server, so that our users can...

06 January 2015 20 min read

Robert Sheldon

SQL Server PIVOT: 12 Questions Answered (Multi-Column, Dynamic, UNPIVOT)

Twelve answered questions about the SQL Server PIVOT operator: how PIVOT rotates data, controlling grouping, column aliases, multi-column pivots, dynamic...

01 January 2015 30 min read

Feodor Georgiev

Data Cleaning in SQL 2012 with Data Quality Services

For data to be usefully analyzed, it must be consistent, accurate, and trustworthy. When incoming data is non-uniform, duplicated records...

31 December 2014 11 min read

Dennes Torres

SQL Server Query Plans: Finding Scan and Lookup Problems with DMVs and XQuery

Use SQL Server DMVs (sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats) and XQuery against cached query plans to find queries causing scan and lookup problems. Converts...

31 December 2014 15 min read

Dwain Camps

Archiving Hierarchical, Deleted Transactions Using XML

When you delete a business transaction from the database, there are times when you might want to keep a record...

30 December 2014 18 min read

Jonathan Lewis

Execution Plans Part 11: Actuals

So far in this series we’ve talked about interpreting the shape of an execution plan and understanding the meaning of...

17 December 2014 13 min read

Joshua Feierman

High Availability and Disaster Recovery for Small Businesses

Too often in the past , High Availability and Disaster Recovery have been marketed as expensive choices for businesses with...

16 December 2014 13 min read

Robert Sheldon

Questions About T-SQL Transaction Isolation Levels You Were Too Shy to Ask

Every time you access a relational database to make a query, you have an important decision to make: What is...

04 December 2014 28 min read

Kathi Kellenberger

SQL Server Reporting Services Basics: The Visual Controls

The challenge of report development is to present complex data in a simple, visually compelling way. The goal is to...

03 December 2014 17 min read

Satishbabu Gunukula

Oracle Database 12c – RMAN New Features: Part 2

Oracle Database 12c has new enhancements and additions to Recovery Manager (RMAN). The Recovery Manager continues to enhance and extend...

01 December 2014 7 min read

Matthew Skelton

Continuous Delivery for Databases: Microservices, Team Structures, and Conway’s Law

Having described some of the most common database deployability blockers, Matthew Skelton proposes a way to enable database continuous delivery...

19 November 2014 20 min read

Phil Factor

Bitwise Operations in T-SQL

How can you, in T-SQL, get a list of columns that have changed within a trigger? How can you see...

18 November 2014 22 min read

Dwain Camps

Using Stored Procedures to Provide an Application’s Business-Logic Layer

When faced with a complex business application that had to be delivered with minimum staffing, on-time and within budget, Dwain's...

14 November 2014 44 min read

Feodor Georgiev

SSIS 2012 Projects: Deployment Configurations and Monitoring

The Project Deployment Model introduced in SSIS 2012, which was explained in the first part of this series, speeds up...

14 November 2014 7 min read

Robert Sheldon

Questions About Using TSQL to Import Excel Data You Were Too Shy to Ask

It is easy to import Excel data into database tables via TSQL, using OLEDB, either by the OPENROWSET function or...

05 November 2014 31 min read

William Brewer

Database Configuration Management for SQL Server

It is not just the rapid and painless testing, deployment and update of databases that requires care in the retention...

05 November 2014 16 min read