T-SQL

A couple of years ago I blogged about Installing the SQL Server 2014 Language Reference Help from disk. With SQL Server 2016 things changed significantly: we have the new Help Viewer 2.2, which is shipped with the Management Studio setup kit. However, despite all the changes in the way help works and is shipped, I am still unable to download and install help content from the web, so I resorted to using the same trick that I used for SQL Server 2014. [Read More]

Some days ago I was talking with my friend Davide Mauri about the uniquifier that SQL Server adds to clustered indexes when they are not declared as UNIQUE. We were not completely sure whether this behaviour applied to duplicate keys only or to all keys, even when unique. The best way to discover the truth is a script to test what happens behind the scenes: -- ============================================= -- Author: Gianluca Sartori - @spaghettidba -- Create date: 2014-03-15 -- Description: Checks whether the UNIQUIFIER column -- is added to a column only on -- duplicate clustering keys or all -- keys, regardless of uniqueness -- ============================================= USE tempdb GO IF OBJECT_ID('sizeOfMyTable') IS NOT NULL DROP VIEW sizeOfMyTable; GO -- Create a view to query table size information -- Not very elegant, but saves a lot of typing CREATE VIEW sizeOfMyTable AS SELECT OBJECT_NAME(si. [Read More]

Oooooops! I exchanged some emails about my post with Jonathan Kehayias and looks like I was wrong on many of the points I made. I don’t want to keep misleading information around and I definitely need to fix my wrong assumptions. Unfortunately, I don’t have the time to correct it immediately and I’m afraid it will have to remain like this for a while. Sorry for the inconvenience, I promise I will try to fix it in the next few days. [Read More]

Some months ago I posted a script on a SQLServerCentral forum to help a member automating the execution of DBCC CHECKDB and send and e-mail alert in case a consistency error is found. The original thread can be found here. I noticed that many people are actually using that script and I also got some useful feedback on the code itself, so I decided to write this post to make an enhanced version available to everyone. [Read More]

The contest is over and the winner is Jeff Moden! Champagne! I won’t repeat all the reasons why I think that Jeff deserves the award, I just want to say that I could not agree more with this result. To say it with Grant Fritchey’s (blog|twitter) words: “Of the year? I think I’d put it down to of the decade, but that’s not what the contest was.” The exceptional DBA 2011 Jeff Moden will receive: [Read More]