I spent some time playing with the SQL 2008 geometry data type. This post will cover some of the things I have learned about how it is implemented from playing with the feature. Some of these will impact the feature’s usability for some. Others may not care. 1. late-binding of the geometry data is an [...]
Conor Cunningham
SQL 2008 Geometry type tidbits
Posted on: April 23, 2008 7:58 pm
COUNT(1) vs. COUNT(star)
Posted on: April 21, 2008 7:02 pm
A follow-up from my previous post. Is COUNT(1) faster than COUNT(*)? No, COUNT(1) is mapped into COUNT(*) early in the QP. From the logic of my previous post, COUNT(1) is always non-null and thus is the same as just doing a COUNT(*). Since it is semantically equivalent to COUNT(*), the QP just maps it to [...]
COUNT(star) vs COUNT(column) vs. COUNT(DISTINCT) vs. COUNT(col) OVER(…)
Posted on: April 16, 2008 9:11 pm
So COUNT isn't an operator, but you should view this post as a "what is this operator" kind of post since I talk about how these things work and what they mean. One of the benefits of building database engines is that all (well, most of) the syntax rules end up stuck in your head, [...]
Costing and Statistics, continued…
Posted on: April 16, 2008 8:54 pm
I started off tonight playing with the new page compression feature. So far I like it. I haven’t found something yet about which I want to post (which is code for “I’m still looking for the seams ”), but I have some other things you can try to learn a few things about how the [...]
Statistics, Damned Lies, and Statistics – What is Statman?
Posted on: April 9, 2008 8:50 pm
One of the areas I managed in SQL Server had to do with the code that automatically builds statistics and uses them during query optimization to come up with a good plan. Today I’m going to talk a bit about how statistics are built and how this works with parallelism and partitioning. First things first. [...]
Slow Outlook 2007 on Vista (x64)
Posted on: April 8, 2008 7:01 pm
I’ve returned from a small trip and I will be preparing my next SQL post soon. I’ve been struggling with slow POP3 sync behavior on my Outlook 2007/Vista 64 box, and I finally found a hammer to beat it back into submission. The problem – I sync manually, and when I do the application becomes [...]
