Joe Celko Look-up Tables in SQL Lookup tables can be a force for good in a relational database. Whereas the 'One True Lookup Table' remains a... 01 February 2011 18 min read
Nick Harrison Database Refactoring Although the methodology of refactoring code has been adopted enthusiastically, the same has not really been the case with databases.... 01 February 2011 17 min read
Robert Sheldon Bulk Inserts via TSQL in SQL Server The trouble with using BCP for reading data into SQL Server is that BCP is a command-line program. Fortunately, the... 31 January 2011 20 min read
Feodor Georgiev Collecting Performance Data into a SQL Server Table Occasionally, when tracking down a performance problem, you have to have information over time on the values of particular sets... 20 January 2011 12 min read
Tools Phil Factor in Tools RegEx-Based Finding and Replacing of Text in SSMS So often, one sees developers doing repetitive coding in SQL Server Management Studio or Visual Studio that would be much... 14 January 2011 19 min read
Fabiano Amorim Showplan Operator of the Week – Merge Interval When Fabiano agreed to undertake the epic task of describing each showplan operator, none of us quite predicted the interesting... 11 January 2011 7 min read
Greg Larsen Which of Your Stored Procedures are Using the Most Resources? Dynamic Management Views and Functions aren't always easy to understand. However, they are the easiest way of finding out which... 11 January 2011 9 min read
Robert Sheldon Data Conversion in SQL Server Most of the time, you do not have to worry about implicit conversion in SQL expressions, or when assigning a... 06 January 2011 17 min read
Dennis Lloyd Sebastian Meine SQL Server Unit Testing with tSQLt When one considers the amount of time and effort that Unit Testing consumes for the Database Developer, is surprising how... 06 January 2011 11 min read
Michelle Ufford Effective Clustered Indexes As a guideline, clustered Indexes should be Narrow, Unique, Static and Ever Increasing (NUSE). Michelle Ufford Explains why. … 06 January 2011 21 min read
Joe Celko BIT of a Problem The BIT data type is an awkward fit for a SQL database. It doesn't have just two values, and it... 04 January 2011 12 min read
Phil Factor The Parodist: A SQL Server Application Every year, we ask Phil Factor to celebrate the holiday season with an article on SQL Server Programming that is... 20 December 2010 18 min read
Troy Hunt Foolproof Atomic Versioning of Applications Bad things tend to happen to developments where the scripts for the database layer are left out of source control.... 08 December 2010 9 min read
Glenn Berry SQL Server Hardware SQL Server Hardware will provide the fundamental knowledge and resources you need to make intelligent decisions about choice, and optimal... 08 December 2010 3 min read
Alex Kuznetsov Tuning SQL Queries with the Help of Constraints The use of constraints is a valuable way of improving query performance as well as maintaining the integrity of the... 07 December 2010 7 min read
Brad McGehee Brad’s Sure Guide to SQL Storage Compress SQL Storage Compress does just that, and encrypts as well, allowing the files associated with a live database to take... 07 December 2010 27 min read
Michael Francis SQL Source Control – Less Pain for Red Jungle As a dedicated 'twitcher', Michael's eye is caught by a 'tweet' from Red Jungle. In this case, it was not... 26 November 2010 5 min read
Richard Morris Jorge Segarra: DBA of the Day Jorge Segarra, also known on Twitter as 'SQLChicken', was one of the finalists of the Exceptional DBA award this year.... 26 November 2010 13 min read
Benjamin Nevarez Index Selection and the Query Optimizer While we all know that the Query Optimizer uses Indexes to produce better execution plans, we don't all know exactly... 25 November 2010 23 min read
Robert Sheldon The DELETE statement in SQL Server Of the big four DML statements in SQL Server, the DELETE is the one least written about. This is odd... 25 November 2010 11 min read
