Running a MySQL database in a Docker Container
Relational databases provide a structured approach for storing and organizing large volumes of data into tables consisting of rows for records, and columns for attributes. They use primary keys which are unique identifiers for records and foreign keys, …
[Video] Office Hours: Recovering from a Cold Edition
While recovering from a nasty cold, I took your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento. Here’s what we covered: 00:00 Start 03:13 Haruki Tanaka: Hi Brent, The stored procedure has 12 parameters, and users pass various combinations of …
How to easily connect and query your SQL Server Data through ODBC
Editor: Thanks for this. It’s not bad, but what it’s lacking is showing how to use ODBC from any application or while coding. This appears to just show testing, and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of DSNs in use these days. Without showing some reaosn w …
Review: SSMS Copilot vs Other AI Tools
I use AI tools constantly in my work, so when the new SSMS v21 came out with Copilot support, I was excited to try it. The short story is that the user interface is fine, and it doesn’t feel buggy, but the advice is simply terrible compared to other LL …
Our Anniversary Sale Ends This Week!
Back in May 2001 when I first registered BrentOzar.com, I never would have dreamed how things would go. I couldn’t have imagined that decades later, the site would be home to: Over 3,500 blog posts with over 10,000 comments About 1,000 pages of content …
DISTINCT and UNION: What happens when you use them together?
When I was perusing my LinkedIn feed the other day, I came across this thread about using SELECT *. In one of the replies, Aaron Cutshall noted that: “Another real performance killer is SELECT DISTINCT especially when combined with UNION. I have a whol …
Free Webcast Tomorrow: Mastering Server Tuning
This is it: the very peak of my free SQL Server Spring Training webcast series. I’ve been teaching 60-90 minutes of my most popular classes for free this spring, and now it’s time for the Mastering classes. Tomorrow I’m covering Mastering Server Tuning …
Top 5 Power BI Common Pitfalls
The post Top 5 Power BI Common Pitfalls appeared first on SQLServerCentral.
Introduction to GitHub Actions Part 2: GitHub-hosted runners
The post Introduction to GitHub Actions Part 2: GitHub-hosted runners appeared first on SQLServerCentral.
Azure Databricks Liquid Clustering: A Comprehensive Guide
Editor: This looks very AI written. You are using lots of lists and not really explaining things in enough detail for a user. You are writing what you do, not why or the effect of what the various elements do. Introduction Liquid Clustering is a revolu …
Data Encoding Schemes
You probably noticed that when you get a bill or bank statement, it uses the current modern Western version of Hindu-Arabic numerals. Yet during the early days of the Renaissance, the accounting firms in Italy often boasted that they kept their records …
How SQL Server 2025’s Optional Parameter Plan Optimization Works
About three years ago, SQL Server 2022 introduced Parameter-Sensitive Plan Optimization (PSPO). At the time, I explained that it didn’t work particularly well, and went so far as to pronounce PSPO in a rather unflattering way. I wouldn’t suggest that a …
SQL Server Developer Standard Edition: A Gift to Developers!
This article is part of a series of posts on the forthcoming SQL Server 2025 release. Once 2025 has been released, posts will be kept if the feature hasn’t changed for the final release. For other posts in this series, you can find them in this collect …
How I Configure SQL Server Management Studio v21
Several years ago, I wrote a post about how I configure older versions of SQL Server Management Studio, but now that SSMS v21 is out, it’s time to revisit that post. SSMS v21 is built on the Visual Studio shell, so it’s got a lot of cool new tricks. Le …
SQL Server 2025 is in Public Preview!
On Monday, May 19, 2025, SQL Server 2025 was announced as finally going to be in public preview. Instead of rumors or going to a Bob Ward session at a conference, you can now experience it for yourself. In this blog, I want to give you a few links I ha …