Year in Review – 2025
I used to publish a year in review post each year, but it seems I haven’t the past few years. It was much more impressive in years where I would post an article every week. I have spent a lot…
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Ember’s Favorite Underrated SQL Function: ANY_VALUE()
At work, I read a lot of customer-written SQL. This is a major part of my day job, and there are some underrated things that I regularly recommend. The ANY_VALUE() function is one of these things. The ANY_VALUE() Function The…
Using Results Explicitly with RESULT_SCAN()
I am a fan of the result set cache in Snowflake. It is one of three layers of caching, and can be a reliable way to mitigate the impact of repeated queries when the underlying tables are fairly slow to…
Analyzing Queries Using GET_QUERY_OPERATOR_STATS
In a recent series of articles, I walked through the query optimizer. I’ve also covered using EXPLAIN to look at queries. One of the primary disadvantages of EXPLAIN is that it does not execute the query, and is therefore missing…
Analyzing Queries Using Explain
I’ve recently finished a series on the Snowflake query profile. As a command-line gal at heart, I also want to cover two tools that are more text-based – explain and GET_QUERY_OPERATOR_STATS. I’ll focus on explain in this article, and then…
The Snowflake Query Profile – Part 2: The Query Execution Plan
This article is the second in a series about the Snowflake Query Profile. Part 1: Accessing the Query Profile Part 2: The Query Execution Plan (this article) Part 3: The Information Panes Part 4: Using the Query Profile to Analyze…
IDUG 2024: Tech Sessions & NASCAR
It’s summer! Kids are out of school, the pools are open, and …. technical conferences are in full swing? For those who are not aware, the IDUG North America 2024 technical conference is happening next week in Charlotte, NC (June…
AWS Relational Database Service for Db2
IBM, the Death Star, and rise of the Resistance. In the spring of 2018, Ember and I attended a dinner with members of the Db2 Technical Advisory Board (TAB). This was a collection of respected Db2 end-users, clients, and consultants…
Comparing Db2 and MySQL: Naming Objects and Reserved Words
Every RDBMS has areas where the differences from other RDBMSes are noticeable, and this is one of them between Db2 and MySQL. Most RDBMSes have quirks to the way SQL is written, and this is certainly true of Db2 where…
Db2 Basics: Getting Data Out of Db2
One of the things that learning a new platform (MySQL) has taught me is just how critical the most basic topics are, so I thought I’d do an overview of how to get data out of a Db2 (on Linux,…
Comparing Db2 and MySQL: NULL in Indexes
I’ve been spending some time working with indexes as I learn MySQL, and there were a few things I thought were were worth mentioning. As always, I’m writing from my own knowledge with deep experience in IBM DB2, and as…
Comparing MySQL and Db2: Table and Index Structure
I’ve spent some time understanding how MySQL structures tables and indexes, and wanted to share what I’ve learned. This is not the structure as created in the CREATE TABLE or CREATE INDEX statements, but how that data is generally structured…