This editorial discusses how to help others take their first step into contributing to the community

A Tool is Better than a Script

by Steve Jones

SQLServerCentral

Tools are important to DBAs, but they need to be reliable, both in what they do, and how they work.

Understanding Deadlock Victim Selection in SQL Server

by john.martin

SQLServerCentral

T-SQL

A short introduction to how deadlocks work and how you can affect their behavior inside your system.

Net Present Value and Internal Rate of Return in SQL Server

by Additional Articles

SimpleTalk

T-SQL

Many organizations store cash-flow data inside SQL Server and decision-makers often need metrics like Net Present Value (NPV) and Internal Rate of Return (IRR) to evaluate those cash flows. Is it possible to calculate NPV and IIR values in SQL Server without the use of external tools?

Half of All Engineers

by Steve Jones

SQLServerCentral

Will AI replace half of all engineers?

T-SQL Trigonometric Functions in SQL Server

by Imran2629

SQLServerCentral

Introduction SQL Server includes several built-in mathematical functions that allow developers to perform complex calculations directly within queries. Among these are trigonometric functions such as SIN(), COS(), and TAN(), which are useful in scenarios involving engineering calculations, geographic data processing, simulations, and analytics. Although these functions are straightforward to use, developers occasionally encounter unexpected results […]

How Multi-Column Statistics Work

by Additional Articles

Brent Ozar Blog

The short answer: in the real world, only the first column works. When SQL Server needs data about the second column, it builds its own stats on that column instead (assuming they don’t already exist), and uses those two statistics together – but they’re not really correlated.

Other IDEs

by Steve Jones

SQLServerCentral

Tools for development

This editorial was originally published on Jun 17, 2020. It is being republished as Steve is out of town. Let us know if you've changed your SQL IDEs since then. Most of us use SSMS (SQL Server Management Studio) to manage our SQL Server instances or to write database code. However, Microsoft does give us […]