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Define the question before writing the query
Read more: Define the question before writing the queryI am writing a presentation to do a couple of times this year on SQL techniques you ought to know. In the abstract, I defined the story as basically, you get an urgent request for a new report that does some aggregation and I am going to give you some techniques to help you out.…
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DATE_BUCKET performance versus conventional methods
Read more: DATE_BUCKET performance versus conventional methodsA month and a half ago, I wrote a blog on using DATE_BUCKET. It is a cool feature thta makes doing some grouping really quite easy. It is here: Cool features in SQL Server I missed…DATE_BUCKET. One of the comments that came in was about performance of the DATE_BUCKET versus using things like DATEDIFF or…
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The Opposite of Mental Rest
Read more: The Opposite of Mental RestSo, I wrote a blog about getting Mental Rest on Simple Talk a while back, and the concept is that I go to theme parks (Walt Disney World whenever it is long, or @dollywood is my home park). and then I work my physical body to complete exhaustion, but my brain… it is completely in…
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SSMS Updating and a new Grid Export Feature
Read more: SSMS Updating and a new Grid Export FeatureDuring the Erin Stellato and Makena Barickman session the other day at SQLCon, there was a question asked. “Why don’t we upgrade SSMS?” There were people in the crowd still on SSMS 17. According to this post that was in 2017. I would like to say this was an outlier, but I honestly didn’t upgrade…
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Expert in one thing, dunce in another
Read more: Expert in one thing, dunce in anotherOne of the most interesting things that every expert at what they do should realize is that there are many things that they are NOT an expert in. In fact, they could be complete and utter garbage at it. Of course, I hate the term “expert” in almost every case because I know experts in…
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Datatype precedence and performance in SQL Server
Read more: Datatype precedence and performance in SQL ServerIf you have ever done any performance tuning of queries in SQL Server, no doubt one of the first thing you have heard is that your search argument data types need to match the columns that you are querying. Not one thing in this blog is going to dispute that. Again, the BEST case is…
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T-SQL Tuesday #196: What Risks Have You Taken in Your Career?
Read more: T-SQL Tuesday #196: What Risks Have You Taken in Your Career?This week’s host is James Serra, and he continued the stream of super hard questions from a personal standpoint that I and then Pat Wright started this year off with, as he asks what risks we have taken in our careers? Of all the topics in the world, I may be sort of the worst…
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Data Tune 2026 Roundup
Read more: Data Tune 2026 RoundupAs I write this, it is the Sunday after the DataTune Conference in Nashville, TN, led by Ed Pearson and a host of other folks who were all donning yellow shirts yesterday. It is a bleak day, and I am sitting in Einstein Bagels in Franklin, sipping my latte, finishing a first draft to put…
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Datatype precedence and finding the datatype of an expression
Read more: Datatype precedence and finding the datatype of an expressionThere is one topic in query and equation writing that is constantly a minor issue for SQL programmers: implicit data type conversions. Whenever you don’t specifically state the datatype of an expression, like when you write SELECT 1;, it can feel a bit of a mystery what the datatypes of your literal values are. Like…
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Heading to Atlanta for a pair of conferences
Read more: Heading to Atlanta for a pair of conferencesIn just over a week, I will be spending eight days in Atlanta at a couple of conferences. I look forward to seeing so many people I haven’t seen in quite a long time, having a little fun, and of course, learning some things too. Atlanta has never been a favorite city of mine (it…
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Hello,
I’m Louis
I have been at this database thing for a very long time, with no plans to stop.
