Jonathan Lewis Oracle to SQL Server: Putting the Data in the Right Place Jonathan Lewis is an Oracle expert who is recording his exploration of SQL Server in a series of articles. In... 17 September 2010 24 min read
Fabiano Amorim Showplan Operator of the Week – Stream Aggregate Fabiano continues his mission to explain the Query Optimiser in practical terms, describing, one week at a time, all the... 10 September 2010 9 min read
Auke Teeninga Minesweeper in T-SQL Whatever happened to the idea that programming in TSQL can be fun? A Simple-Talk reader contributes an article to remind... 02 September 2010 8 min read
Andrew Clarke SQL Source Control: The Development Story, Part II When creating SQL Source Control, the team had to make decisions as to which source control systems the tool would... 02 September 2010 14 min read
Robert Sheldon The MERGE Statement in SQL Server 2008 When the SQL MERGE statement was introduced in SQL Server 2008, it allowed database programmers to replace reams of messy... 27 August 2010 14 min read
Brad McGehee Rebuilding Indexes using the SSMS Database Maintenance Wizard Index fragmentation can cause problems with query performance. Indexes therefore need to be occasionally rebuilt. the Rebuild Index task of... 18 August 2010 24 min read
Joe Celko The DIS-Information Principle: A Splitting Headache You can easily re-factor bad DML code, but if a database design is wrong, you can do little to rescue... 17 August 2010 10 min read
Louis Davidson Tim Ford DMVs for Query Plan Metadata Before you can tackle any performance issues with a working database, you need to know which queries to work on... 17 August 2010 57 min read
Mike Mooney When Database Source Control Goes Bad It is a question every development manager dreads; "So how does your company handle database changes?". The reply usually masks... 05 August 2010 25 min read
Brad McGehee Brad’s Sure Guide to SQL Virtual Restore In the first of a series of in-depth software reviews, Brad investigates a newcomer, SQL Virtual Restore. What does it... 05 August 2010 34 min read
Kathi Kellenberger SSN Matching Speed Phreakery On Ask.SQLServerCentral.com, a group of people interested in experimenting with heavily optimised SQL techniques try them out on a problem,... 05 August 2010 18 min read
Greg Larsen Creative Solutions by Using a Number Table One irritating thing for the occasional SQL Server Developer is that the experts assume that you are familiar with the... 03 August 2010 16 min read
Bruce Armstrong Product Review: Schema Compare for Oracle One of the more important tasks in the process of rolling out incremental developments to a multi-server production system is... 23 July 2010 11 min read
Andrew Clarke SQL Source Control: The Development Story Often, there is a huge difference between software being easy to use, and easy to develop. When your pilot users... 22 July 2010 21 min read
Robert Sheldon Implementing the OUTPUT Clause in SQL Server 2008 In retrospect, it was probably the inclusion of the OUTPUT clause in the MERGE statement that gave SQL Server 2008... 22 July 2010 17 min read
Joe Celko VALUES() and Long Parameter Lists To make progress as a relational Database programmer, you have to think in terms of sets, rather than lists, arrays... 22 July 2010 11 min read
Brad McGehee Automate and Improve Your Database Maintenance Using Ola Hallengren’s Free Script If you ever feel uneasy when you set about handcrafting database maintenance jobs for SQL Server, it may be the... 20 July 2010 35 min read
Phil Factor SQL Server CRUD-Generation from System Views If you are not keen on repetitive typing, you can still rapidly produce production-quality documented code by planning ahead and... 09 July 2010 16 min read
Laerte Junior Gathering Perfmon Data with Powershell When you have to routinely collect data from Performance Monitor Counters, it soon becomes easier and more convenient to use... 08 July 2010 14 min read
Fabiano Amorim Showplan Operator of the Week – Row Count Spool The Row Count Spool operator is a simple component in an execution plan that can make an enormous difference to... 06 July 2010 5 min read