Grant Fritchey Statistics in SQL Server SQL Server's Query Optimiser relies on statistics for providing a decent query plan. If the statistics are wrong, outdated or... 08 January 2013 10 min read
Robert Sheldon Handling Errors in SQL Server 2012 The error handling of SQL Server has always been somewhat mysterious. Now at last, the THROW statement has been included... 03 January 2013 10 min read
Fabiano Amorim Hypothetical Indexes on SQL Server Sometimes, you have to test out alternative indexing strategies, but the task of creating the candidate indexes would just take... 18 December 2012 8 min read
Grant Fritchey SQL Server Backup Questions We Were Too Shy to Ask During presentations about doing database backups and restores, there seem to be two types of questions that are commonly asked... 07 December 2012 20 min read
William Brewer Disaster Recovery Planning for Data: The Cribsheet Planning for disaster recovery and business continuity aren't amongst the most exciting IT activities. They are, however, essential and relevant... 07 December 2012 13 min read
Richard Morris Bill Baker: Geek of the Week Bill Baker had a considerable influence on the way that SQL Server evolved to deliver reporting services and business intelligence.... 04 December 2012 8 min read
Robert Sheldon Report Builder 3.0: Adding Matrices to Your Reports It is easy to create a basic matrix in Report Builder. However, it takes some practice in order to format... 04 December 2012 18 min read
Buck Woody Setting up a Data Science Laboratory There is no better way of understanding new data processing, retrieval, analysis or visualising techniques than actually trying things out.... 03 December 2012 21 min read
Jonathan Kehayias Free Tools for the DBA: PAL Tool The Performance Analysis of Logs tool is a general tool for collecting and analysing log data. With the addition of... 30 November 2012 10 min read
Joe Celko Row Sorting in SQL It should be easy to model a game of poker in SQL. The problem is, however, that you need to... 30 November 2012 10 min read
Robert Sheldon Book Review: Pro SQL Server 2012 Relational Database Design and Implementation A book on Relational Database Design and Implementation is always welcome, especially when written by one of Simple-Talk's most popular... 28 November 2012 9 min read
Database Administration Feodor Georgiev in Database Administration How come the Hourglass? Why database applications slow down It is frustrating when you hit 'submit' and you get the hourglass big-time. Is it the database to blame? It... 28 November 2012 12 min read
Annette Allen SSIS BASICS: Introducing the Foreach Loop Container The Control flow components of SSIS can cause a great deal of puzzlement to anyone learning SSIS, especially the Foreach... 27 November 2012 14 min read
Feodor Georgiev Handling Backups for Rapid Resilience The backup and restore system in SQL Server hasn't changed a great deal over the years despite a huge growth... 20 November 2012 10 min read
Robert Sheldon Report Building 3.0: Adding Maps to Your Reports With Report Builder and SSMS, there isn't much you can't do in the way of the common reports and visualisations.... 13 November 2012 17 min read
Feodor Georgiev How come the Hourglass? Why database applications slow down It is frustrating when you hit 'submit' and you get the hourglass big-time. Is it the database to blame? It... 10 November 2012 12 min read
Joe Sack Fixing Gatekeeper Row Cardinality Estimate Issues The Query Optimiser needs a good estimate of the number of rows likely to be returned by each physical operator... 01 November 2012 18 min read
William Brewer Database Deployment Cribsheet As part of our long-running Cribsheet series, we asked William to write a guide to deployment that described in general... 29 October 2012 14 min read
Database Administration Seth Delconte in Database Administration SQL Server XML: Creating, Shredding, and Combining XML Data with T-SQL Manipulate XML data in SQL Server using T-SQL: create XML from tables with FOR XML, shred XML to rows with... 23 October 2012 14 min read
Annette Allen SSIS Basics: Using the Execute SQL Task to Generate Result Sets The Execute SQL Task of SSIS is extraordinarily useful, but it can cause a lot of difficulty for developers learning... 23 October 2012 14 min read
