Is there any difference between LEFT JOIN and LEFT OUTER JOIN? A reader asked, and here is the short answer: none at all, they are the same.
SQLAuthority News – 1600 Blog Post Articles – A Milestone
This blog now has 1600 blog post articles. To mark the milestone I share a few statistics, like 22 million views and 6200 feed subscribers, and thank my readers.
Loading a Fact Table Without Blocking Reports
Loading a fact table without blocking reports calls for isolated staging, aligned partition switching, short locks, and a tested reader path.
SQL SERVER – Shrinking Database is Bad – Increases Fragmentation – Reduces Performance
Shrinking database is bad: it increases fragmentation and reduces performance. Here is a simple example with two tables that shows it step by step.
TRY_CAST: Parse Failure and Prohibited Conversion
TRY_CAST helps classify bounded integer text while preserving missing input separately. A prohibited int-to-xml request still needs error handling. A narrow text target can succeed while discarding characters.
SQL SERVER – A Funny Cartoon on Index
A Funny Cartoon about a conversation on indexes I hear at nearly every performance tuning job. Indexes do not solve every problem, and here is what else to check.
Star Schema Queries and How SQL Server Runs Them
Star schema queries join a large fact table to focused dimensions; learn bitmap filters, columnstore, and indexes that support the real workload.