(Mohammed Moinudheen) You must have already heard the term “Collation” in SQL Server. Collation is a configuration that determines how character data sorting is done. This is an important setting that has a huge impact on how the SQL Server database engine behaves in dealing with character data.

(Greg Larsen) Have you been experiencing vastly different execution times for the same query over time? If so, you might be experiencing what is known as “Parameter Sniffing”.

(Jim Evans) You want to compare the results from two similar SQL Server T-SQL queries to see if the results are identical. Possibly, you have a complex query that returns many rows that you want to modify to simplify or optimize or for any other reason. You want to ensure the new result set is ident

(blobeater) A way to enforce good practice and standards is by Azure Policy. As stated by Microsoft “Azure Policy is a service in Azure that you use to create, assign, and manage policies.

(Pinal Dave) Recently, while working with a large education institute on Comprehensive Database Performance Health Check I was asked a very interesting question about statistics TIME and IO for SQL Server Management Studio, let us discuss that in today’s blog post.

(Denny Cherry) One of the things that you want to test for when doing an upgrade of SQL Server is query regressions. Regressions happen when the new version of SQL Server makes a poor decision when running the same code that you can before.

(K. Brian Kelley) I’ve heard implicit conversions in T-SQL code are bad for SQL Server performance, but I don’t understand how and when they occur. I also don’t know how to detect if they are occurring in my SQL Server queries. Can you explain what they are and how I might spot them?

(Paul White) An Eager Index Spool reads all rows from its child operator into an indexed worktable, before it starts returning rows to its parent operator. In some respects, an eager index spool is the ultimate missing index suggestion, but it is not reported as such.

(Pinal Dave) Recently while working with a large financial organization on Comprehensive Database Performance Health Check, I found an instance where stored procedure had a very incorrect execution plan cache. I told the DBA who was working with me to recompile the stored procedure so we have to bra

(Joe Gavin) You’re new to SQL Server and need to create a database. It sounds like a simple enough task, but how do we do it?