Grade of the Steel
My Grade of the Steel tuning is a project where I take some basic workloads and tune them until they break. The purpose is to understand where the limits are on hardware, databases and data structures.
The purpose of this work is to inform design decisions for large systems by analysing the components they are build of. It has been said that we need to build IT systems like we build bridges. If this is to come true, we have to understand the raw materials first.
Discovering the Limits
Where I explore just how far a component can be taken.
- The Effect of CPU Caches and Memory Access Patterns
- Implementing Message Queues in Relational Databases
- Why You Need to Stop Worrying about UPDATE Statements
- Implementing MurmurHash and CRC for SQLCLR
- Thread Synchronization in SQL Server
- Exploring Hash Functions in SQL Server
- Boosting INSERT Speed by Generating Scalable Keys
Tuning Tricks
One of the advantages of searching for the limits is that you find interesting tuning tricks along the way.
Thomas Kejser's Database Blog 
Hi! I am a digital marketer. The previous seo guy working for my client has left a spammy comment at your blog with the username Raymond Cubeta which links to my client’s site.
Such comments are causing serious damage to my client’s site with respect to SEO which is why I am request you here by to remove it asap.
If you don’t remove it by 11:59 pm, Pacific Standard Time, 3rd January 2014, we will have use Google’s Disavow Tool to get back-link removed and, sorry to say this, but Google may not look too nicely upon you either for not having removed the comment.
Thanks in advance for your cooperation.
Hi Syed
Thanks for bringing this to my attention. This comment must have slipped through my spam filters. It has been removed.
Please ask your employer to play fair on the internet in the future. Companies who engage this type of SEO “optimizations” are causing serious injury to bloggers like me who just want to publish good information.
By the way, the next time: just ask nicely. I generally don’t respond well to threats and was very close to just telling you to F… off.
Thomas, I am not sure how I came across as threatening. I only explained the situation. The reason I mentioned a date was that I was trying to make sure that I only report those links to Google who have NOT responded to my ‘request’ (not a thread but a request as my first message shows). In any case my sincere apologies. And yes black hat seo is not good for any one and my employer understands that. God bless.
A simple miscommunication Syed. For the future, I would simply ask first (without the threat of what action you will take). If the person does not comply, then you can use the threat of Google Disavov.