Managing Feature Flags with GET_BIT() and SET_BIT() in SQL Server
Learn how the bitwise functions SET_BIT() and GET_BIT() can be used to manage data stored inside a single column.
2026-09-11
1,418 reads
Articles
9 things I wish SQL Server had (and why they’d matter)
Anyone who’s spent years writing T-SQL has a mental list of “why doesn’t SQL Server just do this already?” moments. Here are 9 of those from Louis Davidson’s perspective – a wish list of practical, coding-oriented feature requests drawn from real-world pain points.
2026-09-11
Databricks Genie Spaces for SQL Analysts: Natural Language Querying Without Leaving Your Data Platform
If you've spent years writing SQL for a living, you already know how this goes. Someone pings you on Teams asking, "How many active customers do we have in the Midwest this quarter?" There you are, back in the query editor, writing a JOIN you've written fifty times before. Genie Spaces in Databricks is built […]
2026-09-09
1,719 reads
How Azure Arc allows a DB admin to become SQL Server sysadmin – the vulnerability explained
Azure Arc-enabled SQL Server is designed to bring on-premises and multi-cloud SQL Server instances under centralized Azure management, but a newly documented privilege escalation technique shows how that same management workflow can be turned against the server it’s meant to protect.
2026-09-09
Webinar: What Application Owners Need to Know About SQL Server
If you own a business application, you’re accountable for its uptime, its cost, and its performance, even if you’ve never opened SQL Server Management Studio in your life. But most guidance out there is written for DBAs, not for the people who actually make decisions about the app.
This webinar on Sept 16 is different. We’ll walk through real findings from real SQL Server environments — the kind of things that quietly cause slow page loads, failed backups, and surprise outages — and translate each one into what it actually means for you: What did it cost? What was the risk? What would you have needed to ask your team (or your vendor) to catch it sooner?
2026-09-09
GENERATE_SERIES() Breaks Minimal Logging
tl;dr The title says it all. Prologue One of the keys to my personal learning is that, very early in my database career, I taught myself how to make lot’s of rows of Random Constrained Data in a comparatively short time. With the help of a few good folks over time, the method has been […]
2026-09-07 (first published: 2023-09-18)
5,755 reads
JSON indexing in SQL Server 2025: how it works and current limitations
This guide has everything you need to know about JSON indexing in SQL Server 2025: what it is, how it works, and current limitations.
2026-09-07
Parameter Sensitive Plan Optimization vs. Parameter Sniffing: What SQL Server Fixes and What It Doesn't
See how SQL Server's Parameter Sensitive Plan optimization handles skewed parameters, how to verify dispatcher plans, and where PSP still falls short.
2026-09-04
3,153 reads
How to avoid nested REPLACE functions with TRANSLATE in SQL Server
This guide covers how TRANSLATE() works, how it compares to REPLACE(), and where it falls short compared to other SQL dialects like PostgreSQL and Oracle.
2026-09-04
Importing Excel files into SQL Server using DuckDB and Python
Learn to use DuckDB to read data from Excel and then send it to SQL Server with Python and Pandas.
2026-09-02
4,559 reads
Blogs
The Book of Redgate: Hours
By Steve Jones
I have said and written this many times: Redgate Software is the type of...
How to Check TDE Progress and Elapsed Time in SQL Server
By SQLPals
How to Check TDE Progress and Elapsed Time in SQL Server ...
PostgreSQL Support in the Data API Builder
By Steve Jones
Next week I’m at VS Live in San Diego (register and join me) and...
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Squared Values
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