T-SQL and PowerShell Scripting Articles

T-SQL Best Practices, Part 2

Itzik Ben-Gan — Tue, 22 May 2012 10:07:00 GMT

By Itzik Ben-Gan
Itzik continues his discussion of T-SQL best practices; he discusses cloud compatibility, date and time best practices, the importance of writing in a standard way, and performance-related best practices.

T-SQL Best Practices, Part 1

Itzik Ben-Gan — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 10:05:00 GMT

By Itzik Ben-Gan
Some T-SQL best practices include thinking in a relational way, always remembering NULLs and the three-valued-logic, realizing the full implications of using the NOLOCK hint and therefore avoiding it, and adopting good coding practices.

Understanding Query Plans

Itzik Ben-Gan — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 05:00:00 GMT

By Itzik Ben-Gan
A key element in query tuning is using the execution plan to determine the reasons for poor query performance. SQL Server provides rich information about query plans in the graphical as well as XML forms of plans.

Incremental Index Maintenance with T-SQL

Alan Noel — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 09:00:00 GMT

By Alan Noel
In a resource-constrained environment, traditional defragment operations can negatively affect system performance. Here’s a T-SQL solution that determines fragmentation levels and defragments indexes in a non-impactful way.

SQL Server 2012: How to Write T-SQL Windows Functions, Part 3

Itzik Ben-Gan — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 11:18:00 GMT

By Itzik Ben-Gan
Itzik wraps up his discussion of SQL Server 2012’s window functions by focusing on optimization. He provides indexing guidelines for optimal performance, and he describes cases with especially optimal treatment, cases that compute the difference between two cumulative values, cases that expand all frame rows, and cases in which the optimizer can use an in-memory spool versus an on-disk spool.