A collection of readers questions from this blog, with answers from other readers, like how to script table rows as INSERT statements and track changes.
SQLAuthority News – Leadership Quotes and Inspiration
Leadership is not the same as management. The quotes I shared in a recent leadership talk, from Nelson Mandela, Peter Drucker and others, which the team loved.
Getting Started in the SQL Server Community
Join the SQL Server community through user groups, online events, helpful answers, and a first short talk built from real practice.
SQLAuthority News – SQL Server 2008 R2 – Release Date in May 2010
SQL Server 2008 R2 has a release date in May 2010. Here is what is new, from Master Data Services to StreamInsight, and why it matters to you.
The First Hour on a Server Nobody Can Explain
Investigate a slow SQL Server in a fixed order, checking connectivity, blocking, waits, plans, and storage before changing the environment.
SQL SERVER – Find Statistics Update Date – Update Statistics
Stale statistics can hurt a query plan. Use STATS_DATE to find the statistics update date for each index, then update them if they look outdated.
Building Your Own Sample Data Set
Build a sample data set with realistic keys, skew, NULLs, and repeatable generation when a downloaded sample misses the lesson.
Keeping Large Blobs Out of Your Main Tables
Large blobs can widen SQL Server access paths and backups; learn to separate payloads, avoid SELECT *, and measure off-row storage behavior.
SQL SERVER – Execution Plan – Estimated I/O Cost – Estimated CPU Cost – No Unit
What is estimated I/O cost, what is estimated CPU cost, and why do these costs in an execution plan have no unit? I answer these common training questions.
Preparing a Demo That Does Not Fail on Stage
Prepare a demo with scripts, clean resets, offline backup material, and a recovery route that keeps the lesson moving when a live step fails.