Technical Article

Indexing Guide: The art and science of SQL Server indexing

You can improve your SQL performance by using indexes. But you have to choose the proper indexes and make sure the ones you do choose fit into your business situation. In this indexing guide, you will find answers to common indexing questions, indexing dos and don'ts, and tricks for working with the Index Tuning Wizard to improve overall system performance for SQL Server 2000 servers. This is particularly useful for servers that need a boost before they are upgraded to SQL Server 2005.

Technical Article

Stored procedure: Generate code for ad hoc data operations

A SQL Server DBA often needs to perform ad hoc operations on data in their databases. The tasks can typically be handled with simple T-SQL statements, but other times a more complex operation is called for – and having to manually enter all the T-SQL code necessary for such an operation is not appealing! It can be difficult to perfect the syntax, and tedious to list column names once, twice or even three times. Fortunately, useful template code can be easily generated instead of being entered by hand.

Technical Article

Applying the Principle of Least Privilege to User Accounts on Windows

A defense-in-depth strategy, with overlapping layers of security, is the best way to counter these threats, and the least-privileged user account (LUA) approach is an important part of that defensive strategy. The LUA approach ensures that users follow the principle of least privilege and always log on with limited user accounts. This strategy also aims to limit the use of administrative credentials to administrators, and then only for administrative tasks.

Blogs

Who Are You Doing It For?

By

But as I've matured over the years, I came to realize that I needed...

Presenting Twice in May 2026

By

I will be presenting my latest session, Documenting Your Work for Worry-Free Vacations, in-person...

Finding the Next Sequence Value: #SQLNewBlogger

By

I saw a question asking about the next sequence value and decided to try...

Read the latest Blogs

Forums

Auto Update Statistics not triggering on filtered indexes

By Leo.Miller

I've got a table with 186,703,969 rows, about 300GB of data. There are several...

What is the difference between SQL Server and SQL Database?

By kamiiteore

I created a SQL Database in Azure Portal but I've just noticed it also...

An Unusual Identity

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item An Unusual Identity

Visit the forum

Question of the Day

An Unusual Identity

What values are returned when I run this code? 

CREATE TABLE dbo.IdentityTest2
(
     id NUMERIC(10,0) IDENTITY(10,10) PRIMARY KEY,
     somevalue VARCHAR(20)
)
GO
INSERT dbo.IdentityTest2
(
    somevalue
)
VALUES
( 'Steve')
, ('Bill')
GO
SELECT top 10
 id
 FROM dbo.IdentityTest2

See possible answers