Free Space inside data files differs from unused space on the Windows volume. I check both when planning growth.
Sort Query Using Dynamic Variables Without EXEC – Interview Question of the Week #074
How do you sort query results by a column passed in a variable? Here is how to sort query output dynamically without EXEC or sp_executesql.
SQL SERVER – Puzzle – Solve Splitting Strings Puzzle
A Splitting Strings puzzle: take a column holding delimited values, split them and return how many values each row has. How would you solve it?
What is NOT NULL Constraint? – Interview Question of the Week #073
A client table full of NULL values was hurting query plans. Here is what a NOT NULL constraint is, how to add one and why it helped performance.
SQL Server – InMemory OLTP Hash Collisions Performance Overhead
A customer’s InMemory OLTP tables ran slowly because of a very low hash bucket count. Here is the hash collisions performance overhead and how to avoid it.
SQL SERVER – FIX: Error 1807 Could not obtain exclusive lock on database ‘model’. Retry the operation later – Part 2
Msg 1807, could not obtain exclusive lock on database ‘model’, still shows up in SQL Server 2016. Here is another cause of Error 1807 and how to fix it.
PowerShell – Querying SQL Server From Command Line
A client’s deployment scripts got me curious about PowerShell. Here is how to start querying SQL Server from the command line with a PowerShell script.