The Bit Bucket

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: Developer Level: Medium

Question:

You have a series of very similar SQL queries in an application.

You notice that one of them includes an OPTION LABEL clause.

What would this be used for?

Answer:

OPTION LABEL allows you to apply a label to an instance of a query. That then makes it easy to trace executions of the query using tools like Extended Events or SQL Server Profiler.

2025-05-02

I’ve known Soheil Bakhshi for a while now and was keen to review the second edition of his new book: Expert Data Modeling with Power BI . Our friends at PackT sent me a review copy.

Data Modeling

The data modeling that’s needed for good Power BI outcomes is something that’s dear to my heart, and I was keen to see what Soheil had to say, and where I agreed or disagreed.

2025-05-01

Just a heads-up that v25 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.

Backwards Compatibility

We’ve also tried to keep all the code working for all versions of SQL Server that we see clients using. That means from SQL Server 2008 to SQL Server 2022. We also have an Azure SQL DB version.

2025-04-30

I’ve been a fan of Seth Godin for such a long time. I recently read Small is the New Big: And Other (Little) Ideas That Change Everything . Once again, I’m glad I read it.

One thing I’ve learned over decades of giving presentations, is that you can present all the detail you want, but the thing that the attendees will remember, are the stories and anecdotes that you deliver. Seth is a master of story telling.

2025-04-29

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: Administrator Level: Medium

Question:

Your team is considering a design where a small number of tables would each have a very large number of columns.

One developer has suggested making the columns SPARSE where another has suggested just making them NULLable.

2025-04-28

Over the years, I’ve spent quite some time in Britain and there are many things that fascinate me about it.

Travelling Around

The first is that so many people that I meet with, particularly in England, have never seen much of the country, even though it’s not very big. They just don’t travel around to look at things. Even less have been to Ireland, even though it’s basically next door.

2025-04-27

I’m an unashamed fan of Bill Bryson. His ability to see through the fog of any topic, and to make sense of it all, is unsurpassed. I also find his writing very funny. The strange thing is he doesn’t come across that way in person. I’ve never understood that. I’ve seen interviews with him where he comes across as really flat, yet his writing is just amazing.

I’m also a fan of understanding more about language. So I was really pleased to get to read his book Made in America which is subtitled as An Informal History of American English. He published this back in 2016 and it’s been on my list for a while.

2025-04-26

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: Advanced

Question:

You have a table in your database that contains six columns that are defined with the text data type.

When you run checks on your database, these columns are often flagged with deprecation warnings, and so you change each column as follows:

2025-04-25

I’ve been meaning to write about this book for quite a while. Complete Showplan Operators by Fabiano Amorim is a wonderful book, and a great example of the books that our friends at Red-Gate have made available for free, over the years, as part of their Simple Talk series.

Clearly, reading execution plans in detail isn’t for everyone, but any developer working with SQL Server should be across much of this content.

2025-04-24

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 have a column in your database that is defined as char(20). Whenever you query it, 20 characters are returned, with space padding any unused characters.

An administrator has suggested applying ROW compression to the table, to save space and improve performance.

2025-04-23