Configuring the On-Premises Data Gateway: The Fabric Modern Data Platform
In this next article on the Fabric Modern Data Platform, we examine setting up an on-premises gateway.
Unlocking Data Transformation: My journey with dbt (Data Build Tool) on SQL Server
Learn about dbt, a tool used by lots of data engineers to move data between systems.
Your Security Checkup
We often find security issues come from holes in the way we've set up systems. Steve asks if you perform security checkups on your systems.
5 Strategies to Refactor SQL Code
Code refactoring is a common process when developing in procedural languages – and essential to developing high-quality code – yet somehow often gets overlooked in SQL.
How Important Are Real Time Decisions?
There has been a push to build real time analytics and decision support systems. Steve discusses whether this is a good idea for many organizations.
T-SQL in SQL Server 2025: The UNISTR Function
I am not much for working in languages other than English. That's my native language and I know little about others. However, the last few years I find myself using emojis more and more in quick communications as they seem to add some fun to the interaction. And those interactions need to be stored in […]
How to Query JSON Data Quickly in SQL Server, Part 2: SQL Server 2025
SQL Server 2025 and .NET 10 bring several new improvements to storing JSON natively in the database and querying it quickly.
SQL Server Licensing is Simple
Over the years I've had no shortage of licensing questions for SQL Server. At times it's felt a little crazy. Look at the licensing guide. Choose EE or SE and the number of cores. Then check if you're using VMs. Oh, and consider the cloud, and which cloud you're running a workload on. It's simple […]
Stairway to Azure SQL Hyperscale Level 5: Data Growth and Fast Auto-Grow Mechanism
In this level, we learn about the database file size growth in Hyperscale.
SQL Server DBaaS Vulnerability: Decrypting System Code & Exfiltrating User Data
Security in cloud environments is both challenging and fascinating, particularly for Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) offerings like Amazon RDS, GCP CloudSQL and Alibaba ApsaraDB RDS. The cloud vendor acts as the system administrator, managing the operating system, patching, and backups, while the user manages their data and databases.
Blogs
T-SQL Tuesday #193 – Notes to past and future me
The last T-SQL Tuesday of the year is hosted by my good friend Mike...
A Note and a Message: T-SQL Tuesday #193
By Steve Jones
This month Mike Walsh hosts T-SQL Tuesday. It’s been quite some time since he...
More fun with Git: git restore
The setup My day job involves babysitting a lot of Git repositories hosted on...
Forums
This doesn't make sense to me - making me crazy - er
Hi So I have the below select query that won't return results if I...
Catalog max connection pool size: 100
Seeing this message repeated every 10 seconds in the RSHostingService_yyyy_mm_dd_hh_mm_ss.log file. Can anyone advise:...
CAST datetimeoffset(7) as a datetime in UK format
I have a view where I am casting a datetimeoffset(7) field to smalldatetime or...
Question of the Day
Putting the Player with the Number
In SQL Server 2025, what does this return?
DECLARE @player varchar(20) = 'Bo Nix', @num VARCHAR = '10' SELECT @player || @numSee possible answers