When eliminating NULL values with SQL Server queries we typically reach for ISNULL or COALESCE to do the job. Generally speaking they’ll provide equivalent results, but they work in different ways. If you’re dealing with logic more complex than ISNULL(ColA, ColB) – for example using a function or subquery as part of the expression – then you might be in for a surprise. […]
Our SQL Server environments are home to many workloads. In these situations one size doesn’t always fit all when it comes to configuration. Let’s take an example. On one hand we want small, high performance, transactional processing during the day. Through the evening this could change to larger, batch processing tasks. I’ve seen the configuration […]
Back in our introduction to partitioning I’d mentioned that using partitions can also bring us benefits in terms of performance. That performance comes in the way of partition elimination with our queries. Before we get started let’s set the stage with a sample table and one million records of data which we’ve used before: What is partition elimination Partition […]
Andy Brownsword 