Tim Hidalgo Managing Test Data as a Database CI Component – Part 2 Once you're clear about what data the developers and testers need to be able to be effective, you have several... 28 May 2015 10 min read
Robert Sheldon SQL Server Dates and Times: Ten Common Failures from DATETIME to DATEDIFF Ten common failures developers make with SQL Server date and time handling: DATETIME vs DATETIME2 precision, string-format assumptions, regional date... 28 May 2015 35 min read
Nicolas Prigent PowerShell Day-to-Day Admin Tasks: WMI, CIM and PSWA WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation) is the basic way of querying and changing basic information about any windows server, including SQL... 28 May 2015 12 min read
Dwain Camps Using the T-SQL PERCENTILE Analytic Functions in SQL Server 2000, 2005 and 2008 Percentiles give meaning to measurements by telling you the percentage of the population being measured who get higher or lower... 18 May 2015 27 min read
T-SQL Programming Dennes Torres in T-SQL Programming SQL Server Batch Process Optimization: Auto-Growth, Locks, Log Flushes, and Index Fragmentation Step-by-step performance tuning of a SQL Server batch process - identifying and fixing auto-growth events, lock contention, WRITELOG waits, index... 08 May 2015 33 min read
Phil Factor Documenting a SQL Server Database: Extended Properties, YAML Headers, and Publishing Strategies Comprehensive guide to documenting a SQL Server database: where to keep documentation, what standards exist (XML, JSON, YAML), how to... 06 May 2015 27 min read
Robert Sheldon How to Get SQL Server Security Horribly Wrong It is no good doing some or most of the aspects of SQL Server security right. You have to get... 29 April 2015 24 min read
Feodor Georgiev Making Data Analytics Simpler: SQL Server and R R and SQL Server are a match made in heaven. You don't need anything special to get started beyond the... 28 April 2015 13 min read
Dwain Camps Time Slots – An Essential Extension to Calendar Tables After answering many forum entries from developers asking for help with dealing with SQL that involved time intervals and ranges,... 22 April 2015 24 min read
Chris Hurley Catching Performance Issues in Development Refactoring code won't cause performance problems, right? This was the assumption when Chris Hurley and his team went out to... 16 April 2015 7 min read
Adam Aspin Mobile BI with SQL Server Reporting Services For users to get the information they need from mobile reports, we frequently have to tailor the way we design... 15 April 2015 30 min read
Grahaeme Ross Understanding Cross-Database Transactions in SQL Server Microsoft 'Always On' technology does not support distributed or cross-database transactions. Why not? Grahaeme Ross shows how to investigate cross-database... 11 April 2015 19 min read
Phil Factor Schema-Based Access Control for SQL Server Databases Access-control within the database is important for the security of data, but it should be simple to implement. It is... 09 April 2015 25 min read
Robert Sheldon How to Get SQL Server Data-Conversion Horribly Wrong One of the most certain ways of going wrong with any relational database is to get data conversion wrong. Implicit... 02 April 2015 34 min read
Joshua Feierman How DBAs Can Adopt the Craftsman Mindset The job of a DBA requires a fusion of skill and knowledge. To acquire this requires a craftsman mindset. Craftsmen... 01 April 2015 16 min read
Alex Kuznetsov Painless Refactoring of SQL Server Database Objects Refactoring a database object can often cause unexpected behavior in the code that accesses that object. In this article, adapted... 26 March 2015 25 min read
Dino Esposito Premature Scalability and the Root of All Evil When you're designing an application, there is a temptation to build it to a super-scalable future-proof architecture, even when the... 18 March 2015 13 min read
Fabiano Amorim Never Ignore a Sort Warning in SQL Server It is always bad news if your SQL queries are having to use the SORT operator. It is worse news... 18 March 2015 9 min read
Roy Ernest SQL Server Spatial Indexes Spatial Data in SQL Server has special indexing because it has to perform specialised functions. It is able, for example,... 18 March 2015 20 min read
Dennes Torres SQL Server Index Scan: How to Find & Fix Scan Problems Find and fix SQL Server index scan problems using plan cache analysis. Covers identifying scans with DMVs, converting scans to... 10 March 2015 25 min read
