Your documentation belongs with your code
Why technical documentation belongs alongside the code it describes, and how that improves maintenance.
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Clear, Concise, Complete, and Correct: Avoiding AI Slop
Why polished but generic AI writing can be exhausting, and how clear, concise, complete, and correct writing helps.
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Consuming SQL Agent dates & durations
SQL Agent’s schema is older than me. It handles dates, times, and durations like it’s 1980 by using integers instead of date/time data types. My buddy Aaron Bertrand talks more about Dating Responsibly so that you can have a good datetime with your own …
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Not all stats should be auto-updated
Statistics auto-updates are generally a good thing–auto-update of statistics is the default behavior in SQL Server. Having the freshest information about the data “shape” helps to inform the best selection of an execution plan for queries. Except for when it …
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T-SQL Tuesday: The last ticket I closed
For this month's T-SQL Tuesday, Brent Ozar (blog|Instagram) asks us to describe the most recent ticket we closed. “We had a pretty significant wait spike…” The literal last ticket I closed was “please run this script in production…”, and I don’t think it …
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Publishing a Code of Conduct isn't enough
Publishing a code of conduct is only the beginning of making an event safer and more inclusive.
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How do I prevent a trigger from firing for one process?
I recently saw a question on DBA Stack Exchange (it has since been deleted by the author), who had a “special process” that ran regularly, and as part of that process, they disabled the trigger, did some stuff, and re-enabled it. During that process, the step …
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Querying SERVERPROPERTY() and DATABASEPROPERTYEX() from a view (without knowing magic)
Query SERVERPROPERTY() and DATABASEPROPERTYEX() from a view without relying on undocumented tricks.
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What the heck is the SSISDB? Where does it come from?
Back in my day, we stored SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) packages in msdb, or the file system. Well, I’m neither dead nor retired, so that’s not an accurate statement–today is still “my time.” But when I was learning about SQL Server, those were the …
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T-SQL Tuesday #143: My favorite short scripts
For this month's T-SQL Tuesday, John McCormack (blog|twitter) asks us: “What are your go-to short, handy scripts”? I've got so many handy dandy scripts, it was hard to choose. Where to start? I have so many go-to scripts that are short, amazing, and I use all …
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What time is it in Oz?
How Australian daylight saving time affects time zone conversions in SQL Server and why the offset can surprise you.
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Stop using sp_hexadecimal & sp_help_revlogin
Replace sp_hexadecimal and sp_help_revlogin with a more maintainable way to script SQL Server logins.
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FAQs about the dissolution of PASS
In my prior post, I talked about how all signs pointed to it being Closing Time for PASS. Since then, PASS has announced the organization will “cease its operations and pursue dissolution.” TL;DR; The short version is that on 15 January, 2021, PASS will shut …
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Closing Time
A reflection on PASS, its members, and the organization’s future after a year of public criticism.
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Multi-subnet availability group, with mixed MultiSubnetFailover support (Part 2)
In yesterday’s post, I showed how to configure an availability group (AG) to use the RegisterAllProvidersIP=0 when you can’t get clients to connect using the MultiSubnetFailover=true connection string attribute. I mentioned that you have to make some …
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Multi-subnet availability group, without MultiSubnetFailover support (Part 1)
As a DBA, we have the opportunity & responsibility to build highly available database platforms for use by applications & users. Even if you are a DBA at a small company supporting databases for only internal applications, we are usually still responsible for …
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Microsoft Azure hack for social justice
An invitation to Microsoft’s social justice hackathon and ideas for technology projects that can support justice.
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What's important in a code of conduct?
Earlier this week, I published a post about a proposed Tech Community Equality Index, and used it to grade the largest organization in the data community, PASS. One of the areas where I was critical of PASS is that their Anti-Harassment Policy (AHP) is not …
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Tech Community Equality Index
Over the last weeks & months, I’ve had an increasing number of conversations with folks on the topics of diversity, inclusion, equality, and justice. These discussions we have with coworkers, members of the data community, family and friends are all valuable, …
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Hi, I'm Andy. My pronouns are he/him.
Practical ways to be an ally to trans and nonbinary people, including why using someone’s pronouns matters.
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Racism is our problem to solve
This month’s T-SQL Tuesday is hosted by Kenneth Fisher (blog|twitter). Kenneth asked us to talk about any non-SQL tips and tricks we have. I’m going to take the moment to give some tips on how (and why) you can help fight bigotry, racism, and racial injustice.
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Pride is a riot
A look at Stonewall’s history and the ongoing work of supporting LGBTQ rights and inclusion.
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Find the SQL Server service account with sys.dm_server_services
Use sys.dm_server_services to find SQL Server service accounts, startup times, and instant file initialization status.
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Making non-SARGable queries seek, without changing the query
We’ve all been there. You’ve got a query where the JOIN or WHERE predicate is not SARGable. You’ve read about how this can be a problem, and how bad it is for performance. Alas, you cannot change the query. Sometimes this reason is political, sometimes it’s …
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