December 2008 - Posts

• Did You Know? You, too, can be a Geek!

  Danny Gould has a new (beta) version of his Internals Viewer, that you can download from Codeplex at http://www.codeplex.com/InternalsViewer I've just started playing around with it, and the coolest thing is that it integrates right with your Management Read More... Posted Tuesday, December 30, 2008 8:33 PM by Kalen Delaney | 3 Comments Filed under: internals

• Season's Greetings!

  I was catching up on my blog reading and came across a very nice post on Ward Pond's blog ; he gives us some TSQL code that produces a holiday message. It's a few days late, but it's the thought that counts, right? I did have a few problems with the code Read More... Posted Monday, December 29, 2008 11:50 AM by Kalen Delaney | 1 Comments

• Did You Know? My Book Had Too Many Pages!

  Some of you are aware that I am writing an (almost) weekly commentary for a SQL Server Magazine e-newsletter called SQL Server Magazine UPDATE . I was told that I could write about anything related to SQL Server, but that turned out not to be true. There Read More... Posted Monday, December 22, 2008 2:58 PM by Kalen Delaney | 16 Comments

• Geek City: Splitting a page into multiple pages

  You know about page splits... if a table has a clustered index, any new row has to be inserted into the appropriate page, based on the clustered index key order. However, if the page where the new row belongs is full, SQL Server will split the page into Read More... Posted Saturday, December 20, 2008 4:45 PM by Kalen Delaney | 9 Comments

• Did You Know? My 2009 Schedule

  I am already pretty booked for the entire first half of the new year. March and April include three separate trips to Scandinavia and in June I head down under for a four-city tour in Australia. I've also got several public training classes scheduled. Read More... Posted Saturday, December 20, 2008 3:00 PM by Kalen Delaney | 2 Comments

• Did You Know? There is no such thing as A SQL Server

  I've finished my last chapter of SQL Server 2008 Internals , and now I am doing author reviews. The editors are complaining about the way I use the term "SQL Server". Sometimes I say "Your SQL Server should be configured ...." or refer to SQL Server using Read More... Posted Monday, December 15, 2008 5:08 PM by Kalen Delaney | 33 Comments Filed under: books

• Did You Know? I just submitted my last chapter!

  Less than an hour ago, I sent my last chapter of my next book "SQL Server 2008 Internals" to my editor! Note that I said "my" last chapter, not "the" next chapter, as two of my co-authors still need to complete their chapters. But I've finished my chapters! Read More... Posted Friday, December 05, 2008 11:38 AM by Kalen Delaney | 7 Comments Filed under: books, SQL Server 2008

• Geek City: Using a Nonclustered Index to Avoid a Sort

  Most of you are probably aware that having a clustered index on the column(s) in an ORDER BY clause means that SQL Server can avoid having to sort your data, because it is already logically stored in order of the clustered index, and SQL Server can just Read More... Posted Tuesday, December 02, 2008 8:20 PM by Kalen Delaney | 15 Comments Filed under: index hints, nonclustered index, sort