What If You Need to Index a Lot of Duplicate Data?
Let’s get a little nerdy and look at database internals. Create two tables: one with a million unique values, and one with a million identical values: DROP TABLE IF EXISTS dbo.AllTheSame; DROP TABLE IF EXISTS dbo.AllDifferent; CREATE TABLE dbo.Al …
Creating Time Series Collections in MongoDB
This article is part of Robert Sheldon’s continuing series on Mongo DB. To see all of the items in the series, click here. Throughout this series, I’ve introduced you to different features in MongoDB and provided examples to help demonstrate how the da …
Weekly Blogging
I spent a few weeks away from the office in early January, just like last year, mostly on vacation. Something I started to do last year was to take some of my away-from-office time and do some writing, in particular, editorials for the year. I have to …
Add and Subtract Dates using DATEADD in SQL Server
The post Add and Subtract Dates using DATEADD in SQL Server appeared first on SQLServerCentral.
Attaching Multiple SQL Server Databases with DBCC CHECKPRIMARYFILE
Introduction Attaching databases in SQL Server can be a routine yet sometimes time-consuming task for Database Administrators (DBAs). If you’re dealing with just a few databases, the process using SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) is straightforward …
Temporary Tables
There is a feature of SQL I have not seen used much and probably with good reason. It’s the use of temporary tables. These are declared with the expected DDL. Since they were relatively easy to add to the language, they been around for a while. The bad …
Boosting Data Accuracy: Resolving Common Data Quality Issues Using SQL
Project Context and Data Presentation Challenges In our projects we have seen, data quality issues manifest in various forms, such as NULL values, incorrect formats, invalid characters, duplicate records, and non-ASCII characters to name a few. This ar …
[Video] Office Hours in My Vegas Backyard
I took 5 of your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento while hanging out in the backyard on my second gin & tonic. I, uh, might have lost my temper on the last one. Here’s what we covered: 00:00 Start 02:38 Frozt: are you f …
Azure SQL Serverless: Discover What’s new and Increase Your Savings
Before jumping into the news and code, let’s start from the beginning: Why does someone use Azure SQL Serverless? The answer is simple: Save money. Considering my personal scenario, I can think about at least two different scenarios related to sa …
Navigating the Database Landscape in 2025 Livestream on Feb 12
The post Navigating the Database Landscape in 2025 Livestream on Feb 12 appeared first on SQLServerCentral.
Can AI Rewrite Bad Queries in Seconds? Kinda.
When I see horrific code, stuff that would take a lot of manual labor to fix, I like to lob it over to an LLM like ChatGPT just to see how it does. For example, on a call with a client, I opened up one of their slowest pieces of code to find that it wa …
How to Install SSIS in Visual Studio 2019
The post How to Install SSIS in Visual Studio 2019 appeared first on SQLServerCentral.
Why Standards are Important
Throughout my career I have seen arguments as to which IT standard in a particular area, is the one true standard. Searching any forum for discussions on standards reveals that these debates frequently become acrimonious and heated. In fact, the comb …
Pop Quiz, 2025 Edition: What Do These Things Cost Today?
Price check on Aisle 2025. My main consulting job is a 2-day SQL Critical Care® where I help turn around slow SQL Servers. Companies come to me because they’re not sure if it’s a hardware problem, a database configuration issue, bad app cod …
Nostalgic Memory Loss
Today’s topic pertains to 99.999% of all people, young, old, and all age ranges . I am also not talking about forgetting to pay a bill, backing up a database, or any task one can easily forget as we scurry through what feels like a million tasks each w …