| | PASS Summit Week This week is the annual PASS Data Community Summit. I'm up in Seattle, getting ready for the event. This year the conference is a little shorter. Rather than being gone from home for an entire week, I arrived last night and am heading home on Thursday. That's nice as I've been gone a lot this year. My fun with travel post looked at my travel and contained a lot of blue lines in 2026. In any case, I'm both glad this is a short week and sad that it's not the big event of the past, where I spent five or six days visiting with friends and making new acquaintances at the PASS Summit. I loved the promotions we did years ago for PASS, which funded a SQL Server Central party on opening night. I miss the chaos of a full convention center, navigating the crowds in search of a session, getting distracted chatting with others, and the fun atmosphere in Seattle, running into fellow data professionals throughout the streets. I have many great memories of past Summits in Chicago, Seattle, Orlando, Dallas, Charlotte, and Denver. I've had the opportunity to meet many people, visit different places in the US, and connect with my peers every year, building strong bonds and learning from each other. The Connect-Share-Learn motto has truly described the event over the years. Each year the Summit is slightly different for me. Some years I go to learn. Some years network and connect with others. In some years, it's been a business trip, early on I was growing SQL Server Central, and later, chatting with customers and prospects about Redgate Software. If you've never attended a PASS Data Summit, you're missing something in your database career. The people, the closeness, the fun we have with each other is unlike any other conference I've attended. The days don't end when the sessions do, with many attendees getting together for drinks, dinner, and fun at night. I know budgets are tight, and organizations want justification for sending someone to a conference. Unlike other events where you might only see speakers for a short time, and attendees disappear for the evening, the PASS Summit lets you make contacts, engage in deep discussions on your challenges, and get answers from experts who have come from around the world. Tell your boss this is an investment, a perk, a retention effort, and a training opportunity that is rare to find. If you're in Seattle this week, say hi. If not, aim to come in 2027, and let's chat face to face. Steve Jones - SSC Editor Join the debate, and respond to today's editorial on the forums | | sabyda from SQLServerCentral Introduction When we first start working with SQL Server, most tables are small enough and we do not think much about their size. But over time, a table can collect millions or even billions of rows. For example, an online shopping application may store every order ever placed, a banking system may retain years of […] | | | Additional Articles from MSSQLTips.com Adding a column is relatively easy, since the applications can just ignore it in most cases. But taking a column away can be a little bit more work, as you may have to trick the applications into believing the column is still there. I often see systems where deprecated columns have stayed around “forever” — because people are too afraid to remove them, or because they don’t have the access or capability to modify the source code of the affected applications. | | | SQLPals from Mission: SQL Homeostasis SQL Server 2016 Has Reached End of Support. Now What? On July 14, 2026, SQL Server 2016 reached the end of extended support. That means regular... | | | MarlonRibunal from Marlon Ribunal - SQL, Code, Coffee, etc. I built a free library of runnable SQL Server demos. Each reproduces a real production problem on purpose, measures the fixes, and checks its own predictions on SQL Server... | | | Site Owners from SQLServerCentral As organizations build increasingly data-driven and AI-powered applications, they need database platforms that can grow without sacrificing performance or resiliency. In this practical guide, Bob Ward, a Principal Architect on the Microsoft Azure Data team, takes readers inside Hyperscale's distributed architecture, showing how it uses the power of SQL Server to deliver the scale, performance, and resiliency required by modern cloud workloads. | | | Today's question (by Steve Jones - SSC Editor): | | Too Many Choices | I have a table, dbo.MasterBrands, with this data:
BrandID OfficialName
1 Samsung
2 Apple
3 Microsoft
4 Adidas
5 Coca-Cola
I run this query. What is returned for Coca-Cola?
SELECT CHOOSE(BrandID, 'Conglomerate', 'Tech and Design', 'Desktop', 'Apparel')
FROM dbo.MasterBrands; | | Think you know the answer? Click here, and find out if you are right. | | | Yesterday's Question of the Day (by Steve Jones - SSC Editor) | | SQL Server Audit Failures If I have a SQL Server Server Audit setup, what are my options for configuring the instance in the event it can't write to the audit log? Answer: The instance can just drop events, fail the activity that can't be written, or stop all activity Explanation: You have three options: continue, shutdown, or fail the operation. The shutdown operation stops the SQL Server if events cannot be written. For fail operation, audited events cannot be completed, but other non-audited events continue. Continue means that the instance continues and tries to write audit events, but if it can't, this doesn't matter.
Ref: Server Audit - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/t-sql/statements/alter-server-audit-transact-sql?view=sql-server-ver17 Discuss this question and answer on the forums | | Database Pros Who Need Your Help | | Here's a few of the new posts today on the forums. To see more, visit the forums.
| | SQL Server 2017 - Development | | Inventory Snapshot for missing Period - Hello, We maintain an inventory table that captures monthly snapshots of item inventory levels. However, a new record is only created when there is a change in the inventory value. As a result, if an item has an inventory value of 200 in January 2026 and the value remains unchanged through March 2026 with value […] | | SQL Server 2019 - Development | | MERGE in a nested TRY/CATCH won't roll back - I have a section of code similar to the following abstract: DECLARE @loop [int] = 0, @savepoint [varchar](4) BEGIN TRY BEGIN TRANSACTION _OUTER_ WHILE (@loop < 10) BEGIN SELECT @loop = @loop + 1, @savepoint = '_' + CAST(@loop AS [varchar](2)) BEGIN TRY BEGIN TRANSACTION SAVE TRANSACTION @savepoint MERGE ... -- This transaction works MERGE […] | | SQL Azure - Administration | | Managed Instance vs Azure Database - is this a good option? - We're currently in Azure, however as we had a very tight migration timeline when we moved, we've been using SQL Server on Azure VMs for the last several years. There's a push in the organization to go "cloud native," and on the database side, well, I see some potential headaches. My question can be boiled […] | | Editorials | | A Heavy Heart - Comments posted to this topic are about the item A Heavy Heart | | AI Is Improving Security - Comments posted to this topic are about the item AI Is Improving Security | | Making an Impression - Comments posted to this topic are about the item Making an Impression | | Article Discussions by Author | | Hyperscale Replicas V - Comments posted to this topic are about the item Hyperscale Replicas V | | Calculating Weighted Average in Power BI - Comments posted to this topic are about the item Calculating Weighted Average in Power BI | | SQL Server 2025 Server-level Roles - Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Server 2025 Server-level Roles | | Stairway to DAX and Power BI - Level 29: The DAX Combine & Aggregate Functions - Comments posted to this topic are about the item Stairway to DAX and Power BI - Level 29: The DAX Combine & Aggregate Functions | | Azure SQL Hyperscale Unveiled - Comments posted to this topic are about the item Azure SQL Hyperscale Unveiled | | MiniMax m3 and SQL Server - Comments posted to this topic are about the item MiniMax m3 and SQL Server | | SQL Server Vector Support I - Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Server Vector Support I | | SQL Server 2022 - Administration | | Perfermance result aftet purge operatio - Hello everyone, I am planning to implement a data purging solution that is expected to reduce the size of one of our main databases by nearly 50%. One of my colleagues believes that the performance benefits will be limited. His argument is that most queries access data through Index Seeks, so reducing the amount of […] | | What is the worst part about existing monitoring solutions? - Hi. What is the most difficult aspect of using monitoring software like idera, redgate, solarwinds? | | This email has been sent to {email}. To be removed from this list, please click here. If you have any problems leaving the list, please contact the webmaster@sqlservercentral.com. This newsletter was sent to you because you signed up at SQLServerCentral.com. |   | ©2019 Redgate Software Ltd, Newnham House, Cambridge Business Park, Cambridge, CB4 0WZ, United Kingdom. All rights reserved.
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