Azure-Sql-Db

This is the ninth tale in a series of stories about data. I hope you enjoy the series.

In the first article we saw why size really does matter, both for the DB itself and all the other copies of it that exist in most organizations. We then saw how to estimate the improvement in size with ROW compression. Our customer’s database that started at 3.8TB was reduced to 2.6TB by applying ROW compression without any code changes. Better still the performance of the I/O bound application improved significantly by compressing the tables and indexes.

2025-10-05

One of the problems with applications that have highly-configurable user interfaces (UI) is that users can end up configuring them in ways they hadn’t intended, and then don’t know how to get back to where they were.

I remember the first time that I was at a session with a presenter from Microsoft showing the (at the time) new personalization options in ASP.NET. You could build a website and let the user determine how the site should be laid out, to suit themselves.

2025-10-04

When you get to a large number of query windows or other documents open as tabs in SSMS, it can start to be difficult to keep track of them, and to find them when needed.

It’s not too bad when you can immediately find the tab that you want in the drop-down list:

But if you have more tabs than are shown in this drop-down list or if, like me, you often end up with many of them without names (as they are temporary), it can get very hard to find the few that you are mainly referring to.

2025-10-02

This is the eighth tale in a series of stories about data. I hope you enjoy the series.

In the first article we saw why size really does matter, both for the DB itself and all the other copies of it that exist in most organizations. We then saw how to estimate the improvement in size with ROW compression. Our customer’s database that started at 3.8TB was reduced to 2.6TB by applying ROW compression without any code changes. Better still the performance of the I/O bound application improved significantly by compressing the tables and indexes.

2025-10-01

Just a heads-up that v26 of SDU Tools went out to SDU Insiders last week. If you haven’t used SDU Tools, they are just a large library of functions implemented in T-SQL. You can use them as a full library or use them as examples of code in work you are trying to do.

Fabric SQL Database Release

The main reason for this release (apart from the standard list updates for SQL Server versions, etc.) is to introduce a new target for SDU Tools. When you download v26, you’ll notice there are now three installation scripts, and three removal scripts. So, there are now versions for:

2025-09-30

SSMS is a great tool for working with SQL Server relational databases but it can do much more than that.

In Object Explorer, note that you can easily connect to other types of services:

For a long time, it has been able to connect to Analysis Services to manage SSAS databases, both tabular and multi-dimensional. It can connect to Integration Services but that’s to the older style interface for SSIS. Nowadays, you should use the SSIS Catalog instead. There are a few items that you can configure via the Reporting Services connection as well.

2025-09-30

This is a post in the SQL Interview series. These aren’t trick or gotcha questions, they’re just questions designed to scope out a candidate’s knowledge around SQL Server and Azure SQL Database.

Section: Development Level: Medium

Question:

You regularly execute the following query:

SELECT ProductID,
       UnitPrice / OuterPrice AS PriceRatio
FROM dbo.Products;

When OuterPrice is zero, an error is returned. What is the simplest way to change the query to return NULL for PriceRatio if OuterPrice is zero, without wrapping the expression in a CASE statement?

2025-09-29

SSMS is a great tool for working with SQL Server relational databases but it can do much more than that.

One of our most popular offerings is our SQL Server Management Studio Tips and Tricks eBook . And it’s just been updated to cover v21 of SSMS with our 2025 release.

It’s hard to describe how much work it has been to create this update, but we’re proud of the outcome and hope you’ll find it really interesting.

2025-09-29

If you have ever started SSMS in an isolated environment (ie: one with no external Internet connectivity), you’ll find that it’s slower to start.

That’s because SQL Server uses signed assemblies, and whenever an application with signed assemblies starts, it needs to check whether or not the certificate that they were signed with has been revoked. It’s not good enough to just check if it’s a valid certificate.

Certificates include a CRL (Certificate Revocation List) and this tells an application that’s trusting the certificate where to check for a list of revoked certificates.

2025-09-28

This is the seventh tale in a series of stories about data. I hope you enjoy the series.

In the previous article I started discussing a large customer database that needed to go on a diet. We needed to drastically reduce the size of the database. I described why ROW compression was important, and showed how to estimate the savings from using it.

This month, we’ll start by looking at how ROW compression actually works, then look at the greater savings from PAGE compression. We’ll also look at how it works internally.

2025-09-27