Hearing this is one of those things that really bugs me. And it’s not actually about stored procedures, it’s about the mindset that sits there. I hear this sentiment in environments where there are multiple developers. Where they’re using source control for all their application code. Because, you know, they want to make sure they have a history ...

…is not here. It’s over at https://sqlperformance.com/2017/01/sql-performance/estimated-number-of-rows-to-be-read I write about the new EstimatedRowsRead property, and in particular, about how Microsoft responded so well to the Connect Item I created, requesting the feature. @rob_farley

Don’t get me started on how I keep seeing people jump into Azure SQL DW without thinking about the parallel paradigm. SQL DW is to PDW, the way that Azure SQL DB is to SQL Server. If you were happy using SQL Server for your data warehouse, then SQL DB may be just fine. Certainly you should get your head around the MPP (Massively Parallel ...

One of my favourite things about Power BI is its extensibility. For ages I would hear about how good some other self-service reporting platforms were, and how things in the Microsoft space were lacking. Power View, in particular, was frustratingly limited in what you could do with it, and I felt somewhat disappointed. It was good as a data ...

...but first, let’s look at one oft-forgotten reason why finding a particular piece of text can be slow, if not impossible: collation. This will then provide a useful platform for making it go faster. I say ‘impossible’, but of course it’s never impossible to find something in a database (assuming it’s there). It might take longer, but you can ...

Finding things to publish online for public consumption is something I’m often a bit reluctant to do. Most of my work is for customers, and there’s no way I’m going to share some of their data unless they’ve explicitly allowed it. So when Jorge Segarra (@sqlchicken) posted a challenge to publish a Power BI report on the web for T-SQL Tuesday, I ...

A lot of people don’t like UPDATE with a FROM clause. I’m going to explore what’s going on, both logically and within the query plan. And I’m doing this for T-SQL Tuesday #74, hosted by Robert Davis (@sqlsoldier). I’m going to use a fresh copy of AdventureWorks2012. I’m using SQL 2012 SP3, but the things I’m looking at should apply to most ...

There’s a technique that I’ve been using for some time now, and been looking for going even further back, which has become immediately available to everyone who can see a query plan (version permitting). Some years back (ok, it was 2010), I started to present at conferences about SARGability and residual predicates. I had a session at SQLBits ...

In collaboration with a current client over the past year or so, I've been working on the issue of Test Driven Development for ETL work, especially in the area of automated testing for data. He graciously agreed to allow me to rewrite some of the code we originally developed in Ruby as a set of PowerShell demo scripts and share it through ...

This month’s T-SQL Tuesday is hosted by Jen McCown of @midnightdba fame. She wants us to write about strategies for managing the enterprise, and as a database consultant, I find myself giving advice on this kind of thing to customers remarkably often. No, I’m not going to do stories about LobsterPot customers. We don’t do that. What happens ...