Clik here to view.
Deprecated features to take out of your toolbox – Part 1
Microsoft is not in the habit of deprecating things these days, but when they do, it's for a reason – and it's certainly not because they want to make your life harder. On the contrary, it is almost...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Deprecated features to take out of your toolbox – Part 2
In my last post, I illustrated one reason you should stop using deprecated system tables like sysprocesses. This wasn't for performance reasons, directly, or to simply follow Microsoft's documented...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Deprecated features to take out of your toolbox – Part 3
ul.h, ul.w { margin:11px 22px!important; } ul.h li { display:inline-block; padding:9px 24px;font-family:Montserrat!important;font-weight:bold;font-size:1.125em;color:#444!important; } ul.h li:before {...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Split strings the right way – or the next best way
UPDATE: September 2nd, 2021 (Originally published July 26th, 2012.) A lot of things change over the course of a few major versions of our favorite database platform. SQL Server 2016 brought us...
View ArticleRefreshing SQL Server Tables With Less Interruption Using Partition Switching
A common requirement in ETL and various reporting scenarios is to quietly load a SQL Server staging table in the background, so users querying the data aren’t impacted by the writes and vice-versa. The...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Bad Habits: Avoiding NULL in SQL Server
A long time ago, I answered a question about NULL on Stack Exchange entitled, “Why shouldn’t we allow NULLs?” I have my share of pet peeves and passions, and the fear of NULLs is pretty high up on my...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Serializing Deletes From Clustered Columnstore Indexes
At Stack Overflow, we have some tables using clustered columnstore indexes, and these work great for the majority of our workload. But we recently came across a situation where “perfect storms” —...
View ArticleClik here to view.
String Aggregation Over the Years in SQL Server
Since SQL Server 2005, the trick of using FOR XML PATH to denormalize strings and combine them into a single (usually comma-separated) list has been very popular. In SQL Server 2017, however,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
T-SQL Can Be Expressive Without Sacrificing Performance
Even with its warts and limitations, Transact-SQL is a beautiful language, allowing for flexible declarative expression about what you’re asking the database engine to do for you. Itzik Ben-Gan has...
View Article10 For 10 : My 10 Favorite SQLPerformance Posts Over 10 Years
This is a month of milestones. I was awarded my 25th MVP award on July 5th, which I believe ties me with Tibor for the longest-tenured MVP. SQL Server 2012 went out of all forms of official support...
View Article