Microsoft has just added support for query hints to Azure SQL Database, giving database administrators a powerful tool to manage the performance of ISV application code. Here's how it works. Database ...

One of the most common problems when running SQL Servers is slow queries. The help desk or database team usually hears that described as the application is slow or ...

A common problem developers face when building custom search engines is to implement some kind of paging functionality; that is, to allow a user to issue a query that returns a large number of rows ...

A common SQL habit is to use SELECT * on a query, because it’s tedious to list all the columns you need. Plus, sometimes those columns may change over time, so why not just do things the easy way? But ...

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 ...

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 ...