Category: Installation & Configuration

SSMS refuses to save your Table Designer change because it needs the table dropped and re-created. Write it as ALTER TABLE instead, and here is what the re-creation would have cost, measured on 300,000 rows.

Exporting a query to CSV looks like a solved problem. Set a comma as the delimiter, save the file, done. Then somebody opens it in Excel, a column has shifted, and a customer called Smith, Jones and Co has quietly turned into two fields.

Renaming a Windows machine is a two minute job. Renaming a Windows machine that happens to be running SQL Server is not, because SQL Server records the server name in its own metadata at install time and does not notice when the operatin…

🕐 Version history, with the support dates that actually matter Every release from the 1989 OS/2 original to SQL Server 2025, what each one changed for the people running it, and which ones are still receiving security updates today. Lifecycle dates checked against the builds and lifecycle reference, which is regenerated after each patch release.…

SQL Server Management Studio is still the tool most production DBAs live in day to day, and it has changed more in the last couple of years than the previous decade. There is a new install and update model, a different default connection security posture, and enough quality-of-life settings buried in menus that most people…

Instant File Initialization is one of the few SQL Server settings that’s genuinely free performance, no license cost, no downside for the overwhelming majority of installs, and it’s still routinely left unconfigured on real production servers because it’s a Windows privilege grant, not a SQL Server setting, and it happens outside SSMS entirely. This post…