Phil Factor SQL Server Dependencies: Find & Track Object References Find and track object dependencies in SQL Server using SSMS, DMVs, and PowerShell. Covers soft vs hard dependencies, sys.sql_expression_dependencies, and... 24 September 2015 21 min read
Robert Sheldon Power Query Formula Language in Power BI Desktop The Power Query Formula Language (PQFL) is a functional language that drives the Power BI transformations, and allows you to... 21 September 2015 19 min read
Casimir Saternos SQL and R Not only can you easily retrieve data from SQL Sources for analysis and visualisation in R, but you can also... 18 September 2015 17 min read
David Njoku Introduction to Analytic Functions (Part 2) In the first part of this series I introduced you to the analytic functions family, outlined its close relationship to... 17 September 2015 7 min read
Frazier Kendrick Stumbling Towards Database Change Management The scale of change in the insurance and financial markets is such that there is little time for the application... 09 September 2015 22 min read
Uwe Ricken How Forwarded Records are Read and Processed in a SQL Server Heap Before you deliberately use a heap in SQL Server rather than a table, it is worth understanding why a heap... 09 September 2015 16 min read
Gail Shaw How to Confuse the SQL Server Query Optimizer Gail Shaw examines three common forms of generic SQL that can and will confuse the SQL Server Optimizer to the... 09 September 2015 35 min read
Jason Crease Writing Build vNext tasks for Visual Studio Online Hosted TFS, now called Visual Studio Online (VSO), has a new way of writing build processes called Build vNext. Agent... 09 September 2015 9 min read
Dwain Camps SQL Conditional JOIN: Why It’s Slow & What to Use Instead Learn why conditional JOINs using CASE in the ON clause cause poor SQL Server performance. Compare alternatives: LEFT OUTER JOIN... 07 September 2015 14 min read
Kathi Kellenberger T-SQL Window Functions Speed Phreakery Before SQL Server had SQL window functions, SQL Server developers had to use all manner of tricks and algorithms to... 27 August 2015 12 min read
Robert Sheldon Working with SQL Server data in Power BI Desktop What's the best way of providing self-service business intelligence (BI) to data that is held in on-premise SQL Server? Not,... 24 August 2015 24 min read
Tony Davis Basic SQL Server Performance Troubleshooting For Developers The speed of a slow SQL Query can almost always be improved. In SQL Server, the query optimizer determines the... 14 August 2015 39 min read
Robert Sheldon The Evolution of SQL Server BI It is sometimes hard to keep up with Microsoft's direction in Business Intelligence. Over the years, we've been presented with... 27 July 2015 14 min read
Edward Elliott Non-Breaking Online Database Deployments For an experienced database developer, the idea of doing non-breaking database deployments while the database is still online holds respect... 21 July 2015 11 min read
Joe Celko SQL Style Habits: Attack of the Skeuomorphs Although we like to think that our programming techniques are progressive and in tune with the bleeding edge of software... 14 July 2015 13 min read
Nicolas Prigent PowerShell Day-to-Day Admin Tasks: Monitoring Performance By reading performance counters from services such as SQL Server or Exchange, you can get a wealth of performance information.... 01 July 2015 13 min read
Robert Sheldon How to Get NULLs Horribly Wrong in SQL Server NULLs in SQL are a mixed blessing. The Three-Valued Logic of SQL has its uses but can cause difficulties to... 25 June 2015 36 min read
Adam Aspin SQLXML Bulk Loader Basics SQLXML isn't exactly new technology, but like the even more venerable BCP, it remains the quickest and most reliable way... 02 June 2015 26 min read
Feodor Georgiev Using R to Explore Data by Analysis – for SQL Professionals What's the best way for a SQL programmer to learn about R? It's probably by trying out various experiments with... 02 June 2015 17 min read
Alex Kuznetsov Reusing T-SQL Code Database programmers are often caught in the paradox of wanting to implement business rules and complex functionality in one place... 28 May 2015 27 min read
