Anonymize text columns longer than two characters! — In the previous article Data masking with sqlcmdcli we talked about the complex activity of data anonymization when you have to take a production database to carry out tests in the development environment even outside the customer’s company perimeter. …

SQL Server 2022 is finally available in RTM version! The announcement was done this week during PASS Data Community Summit 2022 in Seattle. The new features of this amazing version of SQL Server certainly cannot be condensed into a single blog post. …

The real game changer is automation! — In the previous article, the third of this series, we described how to write and run a unit test for a trigger! This article describes how to automate the testing for one or more SQL Server objects using tSQLt, Docker, and GitHub Actions! Technologies and frameworks used here tSQLt is a unit testing framework for…

The definitive solution to the MAXDOP configuration! — Degree of parallelism (DOP) feedback is one of the new features of SQL Server 2022 and it is part of the Intelligent Query Processing (IQP) family features. These intelligent and adaptive features can improve the performance of existing workloads without changes to the application code. …

A killer feature of the next generation of Intelligent Query Processing! — Introduction Parameter Sensitive Plan Optimization is one of the new features of SQL Server 2022 and it is part of the family features known as Intelligent Query Processing that improve the performance of existing workloads without changes to the application code. Parameter Sensitive Plan Optimization Parameter Sensitive Plan Optimization in SQL Server 2022 further enhances…

PE (portable executable) header flags for Delphi — In this article I talked about the error known as External Exception associated to the code C0000006 (0xc0000006). It is a generic error that hides the true “low level error” associated the resource (file) the operating system is trying to load from the network. The error is typically reported by…

A magic trick to activate batch mode execution on SQL Server 2017 “without” columnstore indexes! — This article covers two SQL Server query processing methods known as row mode execution and batch mode execution. We will also describe the unique mechanism to enable batch mode execution on SQL Server 2017 even when you cannot create columnstore indexes. Row mode execution Row mode execution is a query processing method used…

Convert non-sargable predicates to sargable predicates — In this article I will talk about the concept known as SARGability, enriching it with some considerations about NULLs. I had the opportunity to study sargable predicates during a session held by Itzik Ben-Gan which inspired me. Wikipedia defines SARGability in this way: “In relational databases, a condition (or predicate)…

Data Saturday Pordenone is back! — The Data Saturday #20 has been scheduled in Pordenone, Italy. It will be an international event with international speakers and several sessions in English language! Data Saturday Pordenone 2022 will be on February 26 and this year it will be completely virtual and free of charge. The agenda of the day is divided in four tracks that will deliver a total of 28 hours of free training on SQL Server, Data Science, Analytics and Microsoft Azure! You will learn more about topics that you use every day rather than learn something about technologies that you don’t use yet.