Blog

• Philly GiveCamp 3

  

  2013-01-22 - General, Off Topic

  Last weekend was Philly GiveCamp 3. I got to work on creating a Choropleth Map of Pennsylvania for the Coalition Against Hunger in Philadelphia. Get all the details about the weekend and the project here.

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• Decrypting Encrypted Database Objects

  

  2013-01-08 - Cryptography, General, SQL Server Internals

  Did you ever have to fix something in an encrypted stored procedure but did not have access to the original anymore? This article shows how to decrypt encrypted SQL Server object using a simple method called Known Plaintext Attack.

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• A Join A Day – New Year, New Join

  

  2012-12-31 - A Join A Day, Fundamentals, General, Series, T-SQL Statements

  While ANSI-92 joins have been around for over 20 years and the pre-ANSI-92 join syntax has been deprecated 4 SQL Server versions ago, it is still in use today. This article provides guidance on how to rewrite those old queries into the “new” outer form.

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• A Join A Day – The Merge Statement

  

  2012-12-30 - A Join A Day, Fundamentals, General, Series, T-SQL Statements

  SQL Server 2008 introduced a single statement insert-update-delete: MERGE. This article introduces this statement, explains how it works and shows that it is really a full outer join under the covers.

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• A Join A Day – UPDATE & DELETE

  

  2012-12-29 - A Join A Day, General, Series, T-SQL Statements

  Do you need to pull in data from several tables to update just one? This post shows how a join can be incorporated in an update or delete statement.

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• A Join A Day – Hash Join Limitations

  

  2012-12-28 - A Join A Day, General, Series, SQL Server Internals

  Which logical join types can be conquered by the Hash Join algorithm? Are there any special cases I need to be aware of for which the Hash Join operator might not be the best fit? Read on to get the answers.

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• A Join A Day – Merge Join Limitations

  

  2012-12-27 - A Join A Day, General, Series, SQL Server Internals

  The Merge Join algorithm is the fastest in many cases. But how do I know what is possible and more importantly when it is not a good choice at all to use the Merge Join operator in an execution plan?

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• A Join A Day – Loop Join Limitations

  

  2012-12-26 - A Join A Day, General, Series, SQL Server Internals

  Which logical join types can be handled by the Loop Join operator and which can’t? Where does the optimizer have to jump through hoops to generate a query plan? This article gives answers to these questions.

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• A Join A Day – The Life Join

  

  2012-12-25 - A Join A Day, General, Series

  Today’s post is all about the life join. This multi-purpose join can be used to expand your horizons and maybe even help to make the world a better place.

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• A Join A Day – Predicate, Probe & Residual

  

  2012-12-24 - A Join A Day, General, Series, SQL Server Internals

  This article talks about predicates, probes and residuals, all of which are used in different places of different join queries. This knowledge can help you to identify why your join query is slow and where it is spending its time.

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