Robert Sheldon Getting Started Testing Databases with tSQLt There are several frameworks for assisting with the testing of SQL Server databases, but tSQLt is popular because it is... 08 April 2013 22 min read
Erin Stellato Managing SQL Server Statistics Accurate statistics about the data held in tables are used to provide the best execution strategy for SQL queries. but... 03 April 2013 31 min read
Hugh Bin-Haad TSQL Pivot Rotations using only REPLACE Pivoting SQL Server tables is always awkward, even with the PIVOT and UNPIVOT operators. If you want to get the... 01 April 2013 8 min read
Kat Hicks Diagnosing Common Database Ails When a database starts showing signs of an illness, it's up to the DBA to get to the root of... 25 March 2013 13 min read
Kathi Kellenberger Solving Complex T-SQL Problems, Step-By-Step What should you do if your first, most intuitive solution to a problem ends up scanning the data more than... 18 March 2013 19 min read
Tony Davis Shawn McGehee Managing the SQL Server Transaction Log: Dealing with Explosive Log Growth You've just become responsible for a database, only to find that the log file is growing out of control. Why... 14 March 2013 13 min read
Robert Sheldon SQL Server 2012 Window Function Basics For some time, Microsoft had a few window functions, but not the full set specified in the SQL 2003 standard.... 05 March 2013 21 min read
Seth Delconte Ad-Hoc XML File Querying When you need to shred just part of the data within a large XML file into a SQL Server table,... 05 March 2013 15 min read
Fabiano Amorim Join Reordering and Bushy Plans Normally, the query Optimiser won't consider 'bushy' plans, where both operands to a join operator could be intermediate results from... 05 March 2013 17 min read
Alexander Karmanov Automating SQL Server Database Deployments: A Worked Example Alex talks through a simple practical example of a database deployment, First creating a empty database and then upgrading it... 27 February 2013 21 min read
Eugene Philipov Comparing multiple rows insert vs single row insert with three data load methods The performance of 'extract, transform, load' (ETL) processes for large quantities of data can always be improved by objective testing... 21 February 2013 15 min read
Robert Sheldon Some Books on Programming SQL Server 2012 It is a measure of the range of facilities that are available to the database developer nowadays that three different... 21 February 2013 12 min read
Feodor Georgiev Full Text Searches on Documents in FileTables SQL Server's FileTable technology is an intriguing way of accomodating file-based text data in a database, and allowing for complex... 14 February 2013 11 min read
Grant Fritchey SQL Server Statistics Questions We Were Too Shy to Ask If you need to optimise SQL Server performance, it pays to understand SQL Server Statistics. Grant Fritchey answers the 18... 12 February 2013 17 min read
Alexander Karmanov An Incremental Database Development and Deployment Framework Often, an existing database application must evolve quickly by incremental steps. Alex describes a tried and tested system to provide... 12 February 2013 27 min read
Dwain Camps A SQL-Based Universal Currency Formatter SQL Server isn't usually the best place to format dates or currency as strings. It can be a complex task... 07 February 2013 12 min read
Feodor Georgiev SQL Monitor – Using the performance data smartly How does a Database Consultant use a tool such as SQL Monitor? The seasoned expert doesn't just dive into DMVs... 05 February 2013 8 min read
Phil Factor Database Deployment: The Bits – Versioning Although databases have no inherent way of recording their version numbers, SQL Server provides the means of doing so, and... 04 February 2013 11 min read
Robert Sheldon Getting Started with Extended Events in SQL Server 2012 Extended Events provide a way of unintrusively monitoring what's going on in a SQL Server instance. Unlike SQL Server Profiler... 04 February 2013 16 min read
Fabiano Amorim Using Optimizer_WhatIF and StatsStream to Simulate a Production Environment SQL Server's Query optimiser judges the best query plan from the data in the relevant tables and the server's hardware.... 30 January 2013 9 min read
