Holger Schmeling Queries, Damned Queries and Statistics In a perfect world, we should just be able to write queries and leave the RDBMS to decide the perfect... 14 October 2010 43 min read
Corrin Lakeland Snapper’s Sweet Source Control Corrin Lakeland's busy role as a Data Manager includes supervising the work of all database development. Although he was already... 12 October 2010 6 min read
Fabiano Amorim Showplan Operator of the Week – SORT Fabiano introduces another ShowPlan operator that is used to build a query plan, or perform an operation specified in the... 11 October 2010 5 min read
Joe Celko State Transition Constraints Data Validation in a database is a lot more complex than seeing if a string parameter really is an integer.... 08 October 2010 13 min read
Rod Colledge Policy-based Management and Central Management Servers Whilst it may be more exciting as a DBA to rush around fixing broken databases, it is far better to... 30 September 2010 23 min read
Timothy Ford Investigating Transactions Using Dynamic Management Objects There can be a great difference in the performance of a particular routine in a test database, and in a... 30 September 2010 39 min read
Robert Sheldon Working with the INSERT statement in SQL Server The INSERT statement in SQL Server is versatile. It now allows the insertion of multiple rows of literal values. It... 27 September 2010 12 min read
Greg Larsen Parameter Sniffing If a SQL query has parameters, SQL Server creates an execution plan tailored to them to improve performance, via a... 20 September 2010 13 min read
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
