Archives for: "January 2011"

Just deployed my first SQL Azure database.

Quiet an adventure as with all IT related things: SQL Azure is almost like SQL Server. Emphasis on the almost. But after a little fighting I got it running. Time will tell us how well it is going to run. My tip to all is to have a deployment script that… more »

How to assign a text containing a single quote to a char, varchar, nchar or nvarchar valiable or colum

Sometimes the need to assign a text like "She's the boss" to a text column or variable arises.DECLARE @MyText AS NVARCHAR(100) = 'She's the boss'; You can already see on the syntax coloring that something is wrong. To put a single quote inside a stri… more »

increasing the performance of count(*)

The fastest count(*) can be archived if you create a secondary index on top of a clustered index only containing the clustered key Carefull this is an index that will be used only here ...   more »

Useless for most people

Hi fellow SQL Server users, I created a new category that I will use to mark posts that are useless for the greater part of the population. This are either tips and tricks that define a very uncommon special case or are just for very very high end… more »

A little bit more information on multi location backups

On of the advantages of backing up to multiple locations is that the data is read on the SQL Server just once, this is an advantage because the IO on the database files is kept to a minimum (in comparison on doing two backups one after the other). Then… more »

Backup to multiple locations at the same time (multiple copies of the backup files)

Sometimes it can be usefull to have two ore more copies of the same backup (e.g. you have two locations/disks and want a copy in/on both)   So lets explain how to backup to two locations at once. First the bad news this is an Enterprise (SQL Server… more »

Hello World

Hello fellow SQL Server users. I have spent half my life working with SQL Server and accumulated a lot of knowlege in this past 20 years. I started presenting on several conferences over the last few years and more and more people asked me to start… more »