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Cardinal Rules, a three panel cartoon by SQLAuthority. The VP suggests letting the AI run straight into production. The red bird is already typing DELETE FROM and Sam pulls the cable out of the wall. The bird says the WHERE clause was coming eventually.

AI in Production Without a WHERE Clause

October 17, 2026
Pinal Dave
AI
AI, DBA, SQL Delete, SQL Server Security

AI in production without a second pair of eyes is a quick way to lose a table. Cardinal was going to add the WHERE clause. Eventually.

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Profile card for PAGEIOLATCH_SH. Blamed for slow disks. Actually means the query is waiting for a page read to finish. Caused by scattered reads on a cold cache. What to do: look at the access pattern before you blame the storage.

Know Your Wait Types: Six Profiles, All Induced

October 16, 2026
Pinal Dave
SQL Performance
Best Practices, Developer, SQL Performance, SQL Server

I caused six wait types on purpose, one at a time, and measured each one for a single session. What each is blamed for, what it actually means, and the numbers it produced on SQL Server 2025. Wait types are the most misread figures in the product.

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Figure from chapter three, a two by two grid with sounds sure and sounds unsure across the top and right and wrong down the side, with the sure and wrong square marked as the danger zone.

Why AI Sounds Confident When It’s Wrong

October 15, 2026
Pinal Dave
AI
AI, AI Book, Best Practices, Career Advice
Part three of ten. A wrong answer from a model sounds exactly like a right one. That single fact explains most of the damage AI does at work. Here are five interview answers that prove you already know it. Look at that grid for a second. Three of those four…
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Recorded test: bigint used 848 leaf pages at 99 percent fullness; GUID used 1292 at 68.8 percent

When a GUID Clustered Primary Key Gets Expensive

October 14, 2026
Pinal Dave
SQL Performance
Clustered Index, SQL Datatype, SQL Index, SQL Performance

A GUID primary key can be useful. Learn when a GUID clustered primary key gets expensive, from page splits to index size, and when a bigint key can help.

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Cutaway illustration of a factory line from IN to OUT, a dozen small hand cranked stations, and one station carrying an enormous chrome motor lettered NEW MOTOR.

AI Productivity Gains Went Up and Nothing Shipped Faster

October 13, 2026
Pinal Dave
AI
AI, Best Practices, Developer, DevOps, Software Development

AI productivity gains went up on every dashboard, and the release notes are the same length as last year’s. Writing code was never the constraint. Speed up one station and you get a taller pile in front of the station that is. Here is how to time your own line.

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Painted illustration of an empty meeting room, chairs pushed back from the table, one glowing laptop and a cold cup of coffee, with an old sprint plan still on the whiteboard and DO NOT ERASE written in the corner.

Tribal Knowledge: Nobody Left to Ask

October 12, 2026
Pinal Dave
AI
AI, Best Practices, Database, Developer

Tribal knowledge is the part of the job nobody writes down, and it leaves when the person leaves. I sat with a team that could not tell me whether they were allowed to change four lines of billing code. The assistant at the end of the table had read every line and could not say why those lines were there.

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Four thick, differently coloured cables run from A through D on the left. Only one cable reaches the database on the right.

Which Cable Reaches the Database? A Sunday Puzzle

October 11, 2026
Pinal Dave
SQL Puzzle

Which cable reaches the database? Four coloured cables cross behind a rack. Follow each one to its destination.

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