Uwe Ricken How Forwarded Records are Read and Processed in a SQL Server Heap Before you deliberately use a heap in SQL Server rather than a table, it is worth understanding why a heap... 09 September 2015 16 min read
Gail Shaw How to Confuse the SQL Server Query Optimizer Gail Shaw examines three common forms of generic SQL that can and will confuse the SQL Server Optimizer to the... 09 September 2015 35 min read
Dwain Camps SQL Conditional JOIN: Why It’s Slow & What to Use Instead Learn why conditional JOINs using CASE in the ON clause cause poor SQL Server performance. Compare alternatives: LEFT OUTER JOIN... 07 September 2015 14 min read
Kathi Kellenberger T-SQL Window Functions Speed Phreakery Before SQL Server had SQL window functions, SQL Server developers had to use all manner of tricks and algorithms to... 27 August 2015 12 min read
Robert Sheldon Working with SQL Server data in Power BI Desktop What's the best way of providing self-service business intelligence (BI) to data that is held in on-premise SQL Server? Not,... 24 August 2015 24 min read
Tony Davis Basic SQL Server Performance Troubleshooting For Developers The speed of a slow SQL Query can almost always be improved. In SQL Server, the query optimizer determines the... 14 August 2015 39 min read
Robert Sheldon The Evolution of SQL Server BI It is sometimes hard to keep up with Microsoft's direction in Business Intelligence. Over the years, we've been presented with... 27 July 2015 14 min read
Robert Sheldon How to Get NULLs Horribly Wrong in SQL Server NULLs in SQL are a mixed blessing. The Three-Valued Logic of SQL has its uses but can cause difficulties to... 25 June 2015 36 min read
Feodor Georgiev Getting to know your customers better – cohort analysis and RFM segmentation in R It often pays to use a tool like R, in conjunction with a relational database, to quickly perform a range... 12 June 2015 14 min read
Feodor Georgiev Using R to Explore Data by Analysis – for SQL Professionals What's the best way for a SQL programmer to learn about R? It's probably by trying out various experiments with... 02 June 2015 17 min read
Adam Aspin SQLXML Bulk Loader Basics SQLXML isn't exactly new technology, but like the even more venerable BCP, it remains the quickest and most reliable way... 02 June 2015 26 min read
SQL Server Dennes Torres in SQL Server Send SQL Server query results to Excel through email Dennes Torres explains how to send SQL Server query results to Excel. It seems easy, but there is a catch!… 01 June 2015 3 min read
Alex Kuznetsov Reusing T-SQL Code Database programmers are often caught in the paradox of wanting to implement business rules and complex functionality in one place... 28 May 2015 27 min read
Robert Sheldon SQL Server Dates and Times: Ten Common Failures from DATETIME to DATEDIFF Ten common failures developers make with SQL Server date and time handling: DATETIME vs DATETIME2 precision, string-format assumptions, regional date... 28 May 2015 35 min read
Dwain Camps Using the T-SQL PERCENTILE Analytic Functions in SQL Server 2000, 2005 and 2008 Percentiles give meaning to measurements by telling you the percentage of the population being measured who get higher or lower... 18 May 2015 27 min read
T-SQL Programming Dennes Torres in T-SQL Programming SQL Server Batch Process Optimization: Auto-Growth, Locks, Log Flushes, and Index Fragmentation Step-by-step performance tuning of a SQL Server batch process - identifying and fixing auto-growth events, lock contention, WRITELOG waits, index... 08 May 2015 33 min read
Phil Factor Documenting a SQL Server Database: Extended Properties, YAML Headers, and Publishing Strategies Comprehensive guide to documenting a SQL Server database: where to keep documentation, what standards exist (XML, JSON, YAML), how to... 06 May 2015 27 min read
Robert Sheldon How to Get SQL Server Security Horribly Wrong It is no good doing some or most of the aspects of SQL Server security right. You have to get... 29 April 2015 24 min read
Feodor Georgiev Making Data Analytics Simpler: SQL Server and R R and SQL Server are a match made in heaven. You don't need anything special to get started beyond the... 28 April 2015 13 min read
Dwain Camps Time Slots – An Essential Extension to Calendar Tables After answering many forum entries from developers asking for help with dealing with SQL that involved time intervals and ranges,... 22 April 2015 24 min read
