(Thomas LaRock) At some point in our lives we have lost or misplaced our car keys. It seems to be a right of passage for most and a daily ritual for others. But at the end of the day we know that, if needed, we can get a new key made.

(Chris Webb) The Excel PivotTable grouping functionality that is available when you are connected to an SSAS Multidimensional cube (but not a Tabular model) is a Very Bad Thing indeed. In my experience it is a major cause of query performance problems – not just for the person running the query, but

(Gethyn Ellis) There has been much talk recently in the SQL Server community about writing introductory level blog posts. Posts that a new person just starting a career as a data professional using Microsoft’s SQL Server data platform could use to learn all about the product.

(Kenneth Fisher) I use impersonation all the time to let me see additional permissions information I can only get that way and, sometimes to help me see what permissions error someone is getting.

(Tim Wiseman) When accessing a SQL Server database from within a programming environment, some tools allow the option of retrieving the results of a query one row at a time or fetching all rows at once. When is each option a better choice?

(Steve Hood) Virtual Log Files (VLFs) split a physical database log file into smaller segments, which are required for how log files work in the background.

(Richie Lee) I recently had a comment posted to one of my first articles I wrote way back in 2012 concerning adding a column that detailed the used space as a %age.

(Pinal Dave) Doing repetitive tasks is something everyone hates. I am sure many of us have resorted to ingenious techniques to figure out doing the task efficiently. There is no standard tool or technique that everyone uses.

(Daniel Mellor) There are countless methods to obtain drive size information, each with its own set of benefits and limitations. I use a few different methods depending on if I have to type out the solution quickly or if I need a comprehensive view.

(Chris Webb) I don’t normally blog about Excel topics outside of Power Query and Power Pivot, but I think anyone who has ever done any serious work in Excel has found how difficult it is to concatenate more than two text values (although there are plenty of blog posts like this one showing how to do