SQL is neither the fastest nor the most elegant way to talk to databases, but it is the best way we have. Here’s why Today, Structured Query Language is the standard means of manipulating and querying ...

Let's break down when it's ideal to use the NOLOCK hint and when you should never use it. As a consultant, I work on wide swaths of database systems, which means I get to see many, many SQL statements ...

First introduced in SQL Server 2012, columnstore indexes can give you major performance gains -- provided you have the right workloads. Here's how columnstore indexes work and what types of data work ...

Microsoft introduced the Query Store when they released SQL Server 2016 and it can track statement performances, pinpoint queries and more. DBTA recently held a webinar focused on the new features and ...

Database performance impacts application tiers and user experience, as well as cloud costs. Yet, understanding database issues is challenging. Whether it's MySQL, PostgreSQL, or cloud databases like ...

Understanding your query performance is critical to discerning the performance of your application. To many outsiders, databases can seem like a black box of performance information. But knowing how ...

With JSON now the default format for moving data between clients and servers, SQL Server adds JSON support to make it easier to get your data out of the database and down to the client. SQL Server ...