SQL Server Big Data Clusters (BDCs) are a highly anticipated feature of SQL Server 2019, but what are they – and how can their capabilities best be leveraged? Let's dig a little deeper and find out. When SQL Server 2017 added support for Linux, the groundwork was laid for integrating SQL Server with Spark, HDFS, and …

Often when I am troubleshooting SQL Server or Azure SQL Database performance issues which I believe to be related to concurrency, I get curious about what isolation level is being used. But how does one find out the isolation level a query is executing with? There are actually several locations that may need to be …

The Call for Speakers for PASS Summit 2019 has just closed, and now the Program Committee will begin the task of evaluating speakers and sessions and using those results to build a schedule. It's not easy. Really, it's not. I've served on the Program Committee numerous times and there's a lot of effort that goes into …

Well, maybe the title is a little bit harsh. You absolutely can drop a SQL Server database that's offline, but remember that its files won't be deleted if you do. Safely Dropping Databases At a previous employer, we had a well-defined process when dropping databases for a client. It went something like this: Confirm in …

I'm always looking for new and interesting data sets for demonstration purposes. I enjoy using data that people can relate to – not only is it easily understood, but often it can be entertaining as well. This data set of real-world parking tickets does all that. A few weeks ago I came across this blog post by Matt …

Months are funny. Unlike other parts of a date, they vary in length: The last second of a minute is always 59. The last minute of a hour is always 59. The last hour of a day is always 23. But the last day of a month? Well that depends on what month it is. And the year matters too because a leap year means February gets …