Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane.

2007

FQL – Facebook Query Language
Facebook list following advantages of FQL:

• Condensed XML reduces bandwidth and parsing costs.
• More complex requests can reduce the number of requests necessary.
• Provides a single consistent, unified interface for all of your data.
• It’s fun!

UDF – Get the Day of the Week Function
The day of the week can be retrieved in SQL Server by using the DatePart function. The value returned by the function is between 1 (Sunday) and 7 (Saturday). To convert this to a string representing the day of the week, use a CASE statement.

UDF – Function to Get Previous And Next Work Day – Exclude Saturday and Sunday
While reading ColdFusion blog of Ben Nadel Getting the Previous Day In ColdFusion, Excluding Saturday And Sunday, I realize that I use similar function on my SQL Server Database. This function excludes the Weekends (Saturday and Sunday), and it gets previous as well as next work day.

Complete Series of SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers
Data Warehousing Interview Questions and Answers – Introduction
Data Warehousing Interview Questions and Answers – Part 1
Data Warehousing Interview Questions and Answers – Part 2
Data Warehousing Interview Questions and Answers – Part 3
Data Warehousing Interview Questions and Answers Complete List Download

2008

Introduction to Log Viewer
In SQL Server all the windows event logs can be seen along with SQL Server logs. Interface for all the logs is same and can be launched from the same place. This log can be exported and filtered as well.

DBCC SHRINKFILE Takes Long Time to Run
If you are DBA who are involved with Database Maintenance and file group maintenance, you must have experience that many times DBCC SHRINKFILE operations takes a long time but any other operations with Database are relatively quicker.

mssqlsystemresource – Resource Database
The purpose of resource database is to facilitates upgrading to the new version of SQL Server without any hassle. In previous versions whenever version of SQL Server was upgraded all the previous version system objects needs to be dropped and new version system objects to be created.

2009

Puzzle – Write Script to Generate Primary Key and Foreign Key
In SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), there is no option to script all the keys. If one is required to script keys they will have to manually script each key one at a time. If database has many tables, generating one key at a time can be a very intricate task. I want to throw a question to all of you if any of you have scripts for the same purpose.

Maximizing View of SQL Server Management Studio – Full Screen – New Screen
I had explained the following two different methods:
1) Open Results in Separate Tab - This is a very interesting method as result pan shows up in a different tab instead of the splitting screen horizontally.
2) Open SSMS in Full Screen - This works always and to its best. Not many people are aware of this method; hence, very few people use it to enhance performance.

2010

Find Queries using Parallelism from Cached Plan
T-SQL script gets all the queries and their execution plan where parallelism operations are kicked up. Pay attention there is TOP 10 is used, if you have lots of transactional operations, I suggest that you change TOP 10 to TOP 50

This is the list of the all the articles in the series of computed columns.

SQL SERVER – Computed Column – PERSISTED and Storage

This article talks about how computed columns are created and why they take more storage space than before.

SQL SERVER – Computed Column – PERSISTED and Performance

This article talks about how PERSISTED columns give better performance than non-persisted columns.

SQL SERVER – Computed Column – PERSISTED and Performance – Part 2

This article talks about how non-persisted columns give better performance than PERSISTED columns.

SQL SERVER – Computed Column and Performance – Part 3

This article talks about how Index improves the performance of Computed Columns.

SQL SERVER – Computed Column – PERSISTED and Storage – Part 2

This article talks about how creating index on computed column does not grow the row length of table.

SQL SERVER – Computed Columns – Index and Performance

This article summarized all the articles related to computed columns.

2011

SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Data Warehousing Concepts – Day 21 of 31

• What is Data Warehousing?
• What is Business Intelligence (BI)?
• What is a Dimension Table?
• What is Dimensional Modeling?
• What is a Fact Table?
• What are the Fundamental Stages of Data Warehousing?
• What are the Different Methods of Loading Dimension tables?
• Describes the Foreign Key Columns in Fact Table and Dimension Table?
• What is Data Mining?
• What is the Difference between a View and a Materialized View?

SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Data Warehousing Concepts – Day 22 of 31

• What is OLTP?
• What is OLAP?
• What is the Difference between OLTP and OLAP?
• What is ODS?
• What is ER Diagram?

SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Data Warehousing Concepts – Day 23 of 31

• What is ETL?
• What is VLDB?
• Is OLTP Database is Design Optimal for Data Warehouse?
• If denormalizing improves Data Warehouse Processes, then why is the Fact Table is in the Normal Form?
• What are Lookup Tables?
• What are Aggregate Tables?
• What is Real-Time Data-Warehousing?
• What are Conformed Dimensions?
• What is a Conformed Fact?
• How do you Load the Time Dimension?
• What is a Level of Granularity of a Fact Table?
• What are Non-Additive Facts?
• What is a Factless Facts Table?
• What are Slowly Changing Dimensions (SCD)?

SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Data Warehousing Concepts – Day 24 of 31

• What is Hybrid Slowly Changing Dimension?
• What is BUS Schema?
• What is a Star Schema?
• What Snow Flake Schema?
• Differences between the Star and Snowflake Schema?
• What is Difference between ER Modeling and Dimensional Modeling?
• What is Degenerate Dimension Table?
• Why is Data Modeling Important?
• What is a Surrogate Key?
• What is Junk Dimension?
• What is a Data Mart?
• What is the Difference between OLAP and Data Warehouse?
• What is a Cube and Linked Cube with Reference to Data Warehouse?
• What is Snapshot with Reference to Data Warehouse?
• What is Active Data Warehousing?
• What is the Difference between Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence?
• What is MDS?
• Explain the Paradigm of Bill Inmon and Ralph Kimball.

SQL SERVER – Azure Interview Questions and Answers – Guest Post by Paras Doshi – Day 25 of 31

Paras Doshi has submitted 21 interesting question and answers for SQL Azure.

1.What is SQL Azure?
2.What is cloud computing?
3.How is SQL Azure different than SQL server?
4.How many replicas are maintained for each SQL Azure database?
5.How can we migrate from SQL server to SQL Azure?
6.Which tools are available to manage SQL Azure databases and servers?
7.Tell me something about security and SQL Azure.
8.What is SQL Azure Firewall?
9.What is the difference between web edition and business edition?
10.How do we synchronize On Premise SQL server with SQL Azure?
11.How do we Backup SQL Azure Data?
12.What is the current pricing model of SQL Azure?
13.What is the current limitation of the size of SQL Azure DB?
14.How do you handle datasets larger than 50 GB?
15.What happens when the SQL Azure database reaches Max Size?
16.How many databases can we create in a single server?
17.How many servers can we create in a single subscription?
18.How do you improve the performance of a SQL Azure Database?
19.What is code near application topology?
20.What were the latest updates to SQL Azure service?
21.When does a workload on SQL Azure get throttled?

SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Guest Post by Malathi Mahadevan – Day 26 of 31

Malachi had asked a simple question which has several answers. Each answer makes you think and ponder about the reality of the IT world. Look at the simple question – ‘What is the toughest challenge you have faced in your present job and how did you handle it’? and its various answers. Each answer has its own story.

SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Guest Post by Rick Morelan – Day 27 of 31

Rick Morelan of Joes2Pros has written an excellent blog post on the subject how to find top N values. Most people are fully aware of how the TOP keyword works with a SELECT statement. After years preparing so many students to pass the SQL Certification I noticed they were pretty well prepared for job interviews too. Yes, they would do well in the interview but not great. There seemed to be a few questions that would come up repeatedly for almost everyone. Rick addresses similar questions in his lucid writing skills.

2012

Observation of Top with Index and Order of Resultset
SQL Server has lots of things to learn and share. It is amazing to see how people evaluate and understand different techniques and styles differently when implementing. The real reason may be absolutely different but we may blame something totally different for the incorrect results. Read the blog post to learn more.

How do I Record Video and Webcast

How to Convert Hex to Decimal or INT
Earlier I asked regarding a question about how to convert Hex to Decimal. I promised that I will post an answer with Due Credit to the author but never got around to post a blog post around it. Read the original post over here SQL SERVER – Question – How to Convert Hex to Decimal.

Query to Get Unique Distinct Data Based on Condition – Eliminate Duplicate Data from Resultset
The natural reaction will be to suggest DISTINCT or GROUP BY. However, not all the questions can be solved by DISTINCT or GROUP BY. Let us see the following example, where a user wanted only latest records to be displayed. Let us see the example to understand further.

Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)