Dennes Torres in Other Azure SQL Serverless: Discover What’s new and Increase Your Savings Before jumping into the news and code, let’s start from the beginning: Why does someone use Azure SQL Serverless? The... 22 January 2025 3 min read 21
Edward Pollack in SQL Server Customizing the Export and import of Parquet Files in SQL Server Previously, we introduced and discussed the Parquet file format and SQL Server and why it is an ideal format for... 10 January 2025 10 min read 21
Ben Johnston in SQL Server When to enable memory-optimized tempdb metadata in SQL Server (and how to diagnose it) How to diagnose tempdb metadata latch contention in SQL Server - and decide whether enabling memory-optimized tempdb metadata is the... 08 January 2025 10 min read
Aaron Bertrand in T-SQL Programming Five SQL Server changes I’d love to see (DROP_EXISTING, ALTER TABLE, STRING_SPLIT fixes) Aaron Bertrand on five SQL Server behaviours he'd like Microsoft to fix: DROP_EXISTING needing an existing index, ALTER TABLE DROP... 01 January 2025 5 min read 65
Dennes Torres in Other T-SQL Tuesday #181: Query Store and its evolution Query Store. This is my choice in relation to “What feature release made you say WOW!”, the subject of this... 09 December 2024 4 min read 1
Edward Pollack in SQL Server Read and Write Parquet Files with SQL Server and Python Read and write Apache Parquet files from SQL Server using Python, pandas, and pyarrow - no native SQL Server Parquet... 19 November 2024 17 min read 22
Simple Talk Editor PASS Keynote – Day 1 – Microsoft In this blog we will be covering all the news and announcements from the 2024 PASS Data Summit Keynote as... 06 November 2024 10 min read 111
Ben Johnston in SQL Server How to write an efficient SQL query: practical guidelines for faster, lighter queries Practical guidelines for writing efficient SQL queries: sargable predicates, set-based operations, index candidates, and how to read a query plan.… 19 October 2024 21 min read 3
Ben Johnston in Databases How to choose the right data types and column options in databases How to pick the right SQL Server data type for every column - covering size, performance, NULLs, and the code... 31 August 2024 28 min read 11
Edward Pollack in T-SQL Programming Store & Parse JSON in SQL Server: Strategy Guide Learn how to store, validate, index, and compress JSON in SQL Server. Covers ISJSON, OPENJSON, JSON_VALUE, computed columns, the Azure... 23 August 2024 27 min read 311
Ben Johnston in SQL Server How to master a database configuration audit in SQL Server: a complete guide A SQL Server database configuration audit is where most issues are found — from compatibility levels and file locations, to... 20 August 2024 16 min read
Aaron Bertrand in SQL Server Storing Weekday Sets in SQL Server Using Bitwise Flags: Schedules and Recurring Jobs Store and query sets of weekdays in SQL Server using bitwise flags - each day encoded as a power of... 02 August 2024 7 min read 1
Ben Johnston in SQL Server SQL Server Configuration Audit: Complete Checklist and T-SQL Scripts Complete SQL Server configuration audit checklist with T-SQL scripts: edition and patch level, file locations, sp_configure settings, logon triggers, login... 25 July 2024 22 min read 1
Aaron Bertrand in T-SQL Programming Index cleanup : Harder than it looks I’m not the first person to write about cleaning up unused or redundant indexes. You can read many articles about... 22 July 2024 7 min read
Ben Johnston in SQL Server How to successfully execute a SQL Server hardware audit (complete guide) Learn how to audit SQL Server hardware and Azure cloud configuration — covering CPU, memory, storage, OS version, and backups... 17 July 2024 14 min read
Aaron Bertrand in Database Administration It’s a recovery strategy, not a backup strategy I’ve talked about it before; you shouldn’t have a backup strategy, you should have a recovery strategy. I can’t possibly... 08 July 2024 12 min read
Edward Pollack in T-SQL Programming XML Performance Tuning and Added Options SQL Server provides a variety of ways to tune XML so that it provides consistent performance, consumes less space, all... 21 June 2024 12 min read
Ben Johnston in SQL Server SQL Server Audit Checklist: Discovery & Setup Audit SQL Server with a structured discovery checklist. Covers server configuration, disk and memory, backups, security, database settings, and code... 06 June 2024 30 min read
T-SQL Programming Edward Pollack in T-SQL Programming Store, Parse & Convert XML in SQL Server Master XML handling in SQL Server: store XML in typed columns, parse with XQuery and OPENXML, convert between XML and... 03 June 2024 22 min read
T-SQL Programming Aaron Bertrand in T-SQL Programming Snake Draft Sorting in SQL Server Part 4: Coordinating Parallel Job Completion Part 4 of the snake-draft sorting series - coordinating parallel SQL Agent jobs when work units finish at different times.... 27 May 2024 10 min read