May 2011 - Posts

• Turning a Scan into a Seek With A Pointless Predicate

  For those people who seek seeks, here’s a “Pro Tip”. Suppose you have a query that involves a Scan. It can be a Clustered Index Scan or an Index Scan, it really doesn’t matter. If it’s a Table Scan, then you have a Heap in play, and this tip doesn’t apply. Read More... Posted Wednesday, May 25, 2011 11:50 PM by Rob Farley | 3 Comments

• Covering Index because it’s Covering up the truth?

  Some people have missed the point about my last post, called Covering, Schmuvvering . If you haven’t read it, then do so. Have a think about what’s going on, and why the Covering Index really isn’t that good, and then come back here and see if you’ve Read More... Posted Wednesday, May 25, 2011 1:20 AM by Rob Farley | 12 Comments

• New hires, new site, new location

  Exciting times for LobsterPot – Martin & Heidi joining the team, a new website ( lobsterpot.com.au ), and a Melbourne presence! In March, Martin Cairney joined the team. Martin is a long-time member of the local Adelaide SQL Server community, and Read More... Posted Tuesday, May 24, 2011 11:12 PM by Rob Farley | 4 Comments Filed under: community, lobsterpot

• PowerShell script to help uninstall SQL Server 2008 R2 Evaluation Edition

  If you haven’t been caught by a client (or even yourself) installing SQL 2008 R2 Evaluation Edition and then letting it expire, you might not realise the pain that this causes. To say it’s frustrating is a serious understatement. Fellow SQL MVP and SQLBlog Read More... Posted Tuesday, May 24, 2011 2:04 AM by Rob Farley | 15 Comments Filed under: powershell, sql

• Covering, schmuvvering – when a covering index is actually rubbish

  Take a look at this query plan. Yes, that arrow indicates a single row. This is an Index Seek, returning a single row. And yet it’s rubbish. That’s right – it’s rubbish! In fact, I had to provide a hint for it to use this index. A table scan would’ve Read More... Posted Thursday, May 19, 2011 4:11 PM by Rob Farley | 22 Comments Filed under: indexing, performance, sql

• New PASS Summit speakers that deserve votes

  I’m not going to ask you to vote for the abstracts that I submitted for the PASS Summit . I’m not even going to mention the abstracts that Roger and Ashley submitted . I figure if you’re reading this, you may have already read the post I wrote about them, Read More... Posted Thursday, May 19, 2011 3:35 PM by Rob Farley | 3 Comments Filed under: 24hop, community, sql, sqlbits, sqlpass

• CTEs – query-scoped views

  This T-SQL Tuesday is on the topic of CTEs, and is hosted by Bob Pusateri ( @SQLBob ). For a bunch more posts on the topic, follow the link to his Invitation Post , and you’ll see a pile of them, all about CTEs. If you’re reading this and it’s still May Read More... Posted Tuesday, May 10, 2011 12:04 PM by Rob Farley | 2 Comments Filed under: sql, t-sql tuesday

• LobsterPot submissions for SQLPASS

  My guys are great! When PASS started accepting abstract submissions for their Summit (in October this year), some of the LobsterPot employees immediately started looking into ideas for talks they could do. We rate communication as one of our key values Read More... Posted Friday, May 06, 2011 4:05 PM by Rob Farley | 1 Comments Filed under: community, lobsterpot, professional development, sql, sqlpass