What I Love About My Job
In June this year I took redundancy from the company I’d worked at for the previous 11 years. It was of course an uncertain time while I figured out...
2023-12-25 (first published: 2023-12-07)
207 reads
Matthew McGiffen DBA
T-SQL Tuesday 167 – Encryption and Data Protection Roundup
Huge thanks to everyone who responded to my invitation to blog on Encryption and Data Protection for this month’s T-SQL Tuesday. I got what I hoped for, which was...
2023-10-30 (first published: 2023-10-17)
318 reads
T-SQL Tuesday: Encryption and Data Protection
I have the honour of hosting this month’s T-SQL Tuesday. In case there’s any doubt that’s for October 2023, I’m posting this invitation a little early as I got...
2023-09-29
29 reads
Manually updating Statistics in SQL Server
Having up to date statistics is vital for getting the best performance out of your queries. Even though SQL Server automatically updates statistics in the background for you, you...
2023-09-06
33 reads
Statistics and the Ascending Key Problem
I’ve mentioned previously how not having up to date statistics can cause problems in query performance. This post looks at something called the Ascending Key Problem which can badly...
2023-07-21
121 reads
When do Statistics get updated?
Statistics objects are important for allowing the SQL Server Optimizer to make good estimates and form efficient execution plans. Related to that it's useful for us to understand when...
2023-06-28
155 reads
What are Statistics in SQL Server?
Statistics are vitally important in allowing SQL Server to find the most efficient way to execute your queries. In this post we learn more about them, what they are...
2023-06-21
309 reads
Indexes and Statistics with Always Encrypted
In this short post we look at the ability to be able to have (or not) indexes on columns encrypted using Always Encrypted.
2023-06-20
131 reads
Under Promise and Overdeliver
If you under promise and overdeliver then you will always have happy clients.
2023-06-19
26 reads
What Happens in the Background when Executing Queries with Always Encrypted
In previous posts we've looked at a number of aspects of Always Encrypted and how it works. I think it's very useful to understand how it actually works in...
2023-07-03 (first published: 2023-06-15)
244 reads
Blogs
How to Find Expensive Queries in Amazon Redshift
Slow-running queries can degrade your Redshift cluster’s performance and lead to increased costs. Identifying...
The Notification Trap: How Input Fatigue Is Killing Deep Work in Tech
By gbargsley
If you've been here before, you know this blog is usually about SQL Server,...
Designing a Storage Load Test for SQL Server
I’ve been doing storage load tests for SQL Server for a long time, both...
Forums
SQL 2019 instance with AG, across 2 Windows 2016 OS servers - OSin-place upgrade
Hi all Can I get some perspective from the community please on performing in-place...
How Long is a Long I/O?
Comments posted to this topic are about the item How Long is a Long...
T-SQL Trigonometric Functions in SQL Server
Comments posted to this topic are about the item T-SQL Trigonometric Functions in SQL...
Question of the Day
How Long is a Long I/O?
In SQL Server 2025, a long I/O is recorded in the error log with message 833. How long much an I/O request be outstanding before this message is written to the log?
See possible answers