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• When is a SQL function not a function?

  Should SQL Server even have functions? (Oh yeah – this is a T-SQL Tuesday post , hosted this month by Brad Schulz ) Functions serve an important part of programming, in almost any language. A function is a piece of code that is designed to return something, Read More... Posted Tuesday, November 08, 2011 11:01 AM by Rob Farley | 8 Comments Filed under: performance, sql, t-sql tuesday

• Joins without JOIN

  I’m now doing two sessions at the SQL Saturday event in Portland . I had been scheduled to do a single session (on indexes) , but got an email yesterday asking if I could do another one as well. So now I’m going to do a session earlier in the day about Read More... Posted Tuesday, October 04, 2011 2:43 PM by Rob Farley | 7 Comments Filed under: performance, sql, t-sql tuesday

• My biggest recommendation for people learning T-SQL

  It’s not quite a Best Practice , but it’s something that I see as very important. It makes the difference between someone who might be quite good at T-SQL, and someone who can go past the rest and become one of those people who get asked to solve other Read More... Posted Tuesday, July 12, 2011 11:58 AM by Rob Farley | 1 Comments Filed under: performance, sql, t-sql tuesday

• The blocking nature of aggregates

  I wrote a post recently about how query tuning isn’t just about how quickly the query runs – that if you have something (such as SSIS) that is consuming your data (and probably introducing a bottleneck), then it might be more important to have a query Read More... Posted Tuesday, March 08, 2011 11:12 AM by Rob Farley | 5 Comments Filed under: performance, sql, t-sql tuesday

• Table? No such thing…

  No really – hear me out. Of course you create tables, and you query tables, and we say that data is stored in tables. The table is (rightly) a fundamental part of relational theory. But I find that when I think about queries and how they run, I need to Read More... Posted Tuesday, September 14, 2010 11:48 AM by Rob Farley | 5 Comments Filed under: indexing, performance, sql, t-sql tuesday

• Spatial data from shapefiles (for T-SQL Tuesday #006)

  I’m giving a presentation on May 12th at the Adelaide .Net User Group, around the topic of spatial data, and in particular, the visualization of said data. Given that it’s about one the larger types, this post should also count towards Michael Coles’ Read More... Posted Tuesday, May 11, 2010 3:57 PM by Rob Farley | 3 Comments Filed under: community, performance, reporting services, spatial, sql, t-sql tuesday

• T-SQL Tuesday - Query Cost

  In SQL Server, the cost of a particular plans is based largely on I/O, which makes this post a good candidate for this month’s T-SQL Tuesday , hosted by Mike Walsh who, like me, walks a straight path. In considering I/O – the movement of data generally Read More... Posted Tuesday, March 09, 2010 11:03 AM by Rob Farley | 6 Comments Filed under: performance, sql, t-sql tuesday