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
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
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
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
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
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
Annette Allen SSIS Basics: Using the Conditional Split The Conditional Split can route data rows to different outputs depending on whatever criteria of the data that you wish.... 28 January 2013 12 min read
Seth Delconte Precision Indexing: Basics of Selective XML Indexes in SQL Server 2012 Seldom has a SQL Server Service pack had such an effect on database development as when SQL Server 2012 SP1... 25 January 2013 14 min read
Warwick Rudd Expanding AlwaysOn Availability Groups with Replication Subscribers High Availability (HA) and Disaster Recovery (DR) can be provided for subscription databases from an AlwaysOn Avaliability Group, but the... 18 January 2013 8 min read
Database Administration Gail Shaw in Database Administration SQL Server Won’t Start: Causes, Errors, and Fixes SQL Server won't start? This guide covers the most common causes: incorrect service account password, missing or corrupt master/model/TempDB database... 17 January 2013 30 min read
Warwick Rudd Expanding AlwaysOn Availability Groups with Replication Publishers SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn Availability Groups provide a high-availability and disaster-recovery solution for you SQL Server 2012 environments. Replication has... 14 January 2013 9 min read
Joe Celko UNIQUE Constraints in SQL Here is an in-depth look at an underused constraint, UNIQUE, that can increase the performance of queries and protect data... 10 January 2013 22 min read
Feodor Georgiev HDDs, SSDs and Database Considerations In this article Feodor clears up a few myths about storage, explains the difference in how HDDs and SSDs work... 09 January 2013 11 min read
