Microsoft SQLCAT ISV Program Management Team

Asynchronous Population of a Cursor May Result in Performance Degradation

SQL Server offers an option to asynchronously populate API created keyset and static server cursors...

Author: Peter Scharlock Date: 07/29/2009

Interesting issue with Filtered indexes.

Recently, an ISV I work with ran into an interesting problem with Filtered Indexes. The application...

Author: Peter Scharlock Date: 06/29/2009

Why did the size of my indexes expand when I rebuilt my indexes?

Recently I worked with a partner who was seeing some interesting behavior. Upon rebuilding their...

Author: Peter Scharlock Date: 05/18/2009

SQL Server 2005 / 2008 table partitioning : Important things to consider when switching-out partitions.

An ISV recently found an anomoly in their implementation of a "drop table partition" function which...

Author: Peter Scharlock Date: 04/10/2009

Avoid using JDK Date APIs to handle timezone sensitive date and time

JDK APIs for Class “java.util.Date” and “java.sql.Timestamp” (subclass of Date) including...

Author: Peter Scharlock Date: 03/26/2009

Zeroing in on blocking on seemingly unrelated tables

In one of our recent lab tests we were surprised to see blocking occur on a table that did not...

Author: Peter Scharlock Date: 02/02/2009

Using SQL Server 2008 Management Data Warehouse for database monitoring in my application

SQL Server 2008 introduced what we call the Management Data Warehouse. The Management Data Warehouse...

Author: Peter Scharlock Date: 01/29/2009

OPTIMIZE FOR UNKNOWN – a little known SQL Server 2008 feature

Using parameterized queries is a well known SQL Server Best Practice. This technique ensures caching...

Author: Peter Scharlock Date: 11/26/2008

In previous SQL Server releases it wasn’t possible to convert binary data to string characters in...

Author: Peter Scharlock Date: 10/31/2008

Designing Composite Indexes

When it comes to creating composite indexes there are two questions I get asked most often by the...

Author: Peter Scharlock Date: 09/26/2008

How to create an autonomous transaction in SQL Server 2008

I have been asked by many customers and partners, especially those migrating from Oracle, this...

Author: Peter Scharlock Date: 08/22/2008

UPDATE with OUTPUT clause – Triggers – and SQLMoreResults

NOTE: the code in this BLOG is TSQL instead of ODBC calls. Since ODBC can be hard to understand and...

Author: Peter Scharlock Date: 07/11/2008

Use SQL Server replay tools to reproduce and resolve customer issues

For many ISVs that run into issues at customer sites it is sometimes difficult to isolate underlying...

Author: Peter Scharlock Date: 06/26/2008

SQL Server Intermittent Connectivity Issue

Recently many customers of an ISV I work with, reported intermittent connectivity issues when...

Author: Peter Scharlock Date: 05/27/2008

Using time zone data in SQL Server 2008

In SQL Server 2008 Microsoft has introduced a number of new date and time data types. One of these...

Author: Peter Scharlock Date: 03/18/2008

Increase your SQL Server performance by replacing cursors with set operations

You have probably heard many times, from different sources, that as a best practice; avoid using...

Author: Peter Scharlock Date: 03/18/2008

Appending Data Using SQL 2008 Filestream

SQL Server 2008 has a new feature called Filestream, which allows you to save large binary files in...

Author: Peter Scharlock Date: 03/06/2008

Now is time to try SQL Server 2008

Did you know that SQL Server 2008 is right around the corner, and that the SQL development team has...

Author: Peter Scharlock Date: 02/25/2008

Detecting Overlapping Indexes in SQL Server 2005

When SQL Server has an optimal index that satisfies the search predicates of a query the optimizer...

Author: Peter Scharlock Date: 06/29/2007

New SQL Best Practice Articles now available

Please have a look at four new Best Practices Articles SQL Server 2005 Predeployment I/O best...

Author: Peter Scharlock Date: 06/05/2007

Will 64-bit increase the performance of my SQL Server application?

With 64-bit servers becoming more mainstream and SQL Server customers running more deployments on...

Author: Peter Scharlock Date: 04/30/2007

Upgrading to SQL Server 2005 and DEFAULT_SCHEMA setting.

Upgrading to SQL Server 2005 has many benefits . As we look back at the past year and the deployment...

Author: Peter Scharlock Date: 03/23/2007

Best Practices for SQL Server 2005

Did you know there is a great place to get real-world best practices for SQL Server 2005:...

Author: Peter Scharlock Date: 02/08/2007

Case-insensitive Search Operations

Many applications have a functional requirement for the underlying database to have a case-sensitive...

Author: Peter Scharlock Date: 01/04/2007

Knowing about 'Forwarded Records' can help diagnose hard to find performance issues.

Imagine a customer using an ISV application that stores certain product information in a...

Author: Peter Scharlock Date: 12/01/2006

Resolving Login Errors with Duplicated Databases

Many ISVs and ISV customers often have a need to duplicate their database server in entirety onto...

Author: Peter Scharlock Date: 10/17/2006

SQL Server 2005 UNICODE considerations.

ISV applications today often require international support. Migrating an existing non-Unicode...

Author: Peter Scharlock Date: 07/07/2006

Three significant Cursor changes in SQL Server 2005

Many ISV applications use ODBC API Server Cursors. One source of developer confusion when coding and...

Author: Peter Scharlock Date: 06/23/2006

The Perils of Multi-valued logic

Perils of NULL usage: I know there is a religious war about the use of NULLs and I don’t want to go...

Author: Peter Scharlock Date: 05/30/2006

SQL 2000 SP4 behavior change when using API cursors to be aware of.

A few customers and ISVs who’ve applied SQL Server 2000 Service Pack 4 (SP4) have observed...

Author: Peter Scharlock Date: 05/18/2006

SQL Optimizations - Manual Update statistics on small tables may provide a big impact.

Problem: When I analyzed a performance problem in an ISV data warehouse solution running on SQL...

Author: Peter Scharlock Date: 05/11/2006

SQL Optimizations – A well concealed transform that can cut that much needed millisecond out of your query.

SQL Server Optimizer is full of surprises… Optimizer uses many transformations to find the best...

Author: Peter Scharlock Date: 05/05/2006

SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 1 Released

SQL Server 2005 SP1 is now generally available for download via the web at:...

Author: Peter Scharlock Date: 04/20/2006

How to Block fetch over a Default Result Set

Problem: When I was design/performance reviewing an ISV ODBC application, I turned on SQL Server...

Author: Peter Scharlock Date: 03/24/2006

Stay tuned for the SQL Server ISV Program Management Team BLOG

Hi SQL Server Community! Did you know that the SQL Server Product development team has a team of...

Author: Peter Scharlock Date: 03/15/2006