I Don't Want To Do XX
This Friday Steve is looking for those things you wish you didn't have to handle at work. Let us know what tasks you avoid and would rather hand off to others.
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.
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.
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 […]
The Costs of Multiple Platforms
Lots of organizations use multiple database platforms. Steve notes there is a cost to choosing to allow this.
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.
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?
Does the Job Matter To You?
How important is your job to you? Today's guest editorial from Andy Warren asks the question of the professionals out there, some of whom do great work, but don't care about their jobs.
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 […]
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.
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...
Forums
Squared Values
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Squared Values
I Don't Want To Do XX
Comments posted to this topic are about the item I Don't Want To Do...
Managing Feature Flags with GET_BIT() and SET_BIT() in SQL Server
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Managing Feature Flags with GET_BIT()...
Question of the Day
Squared Values
What happens when I run this code in SQL Server 2022?
SELECT SQUARE('12') See possible answers