Detecting Issues
How do you detect issues in your systems? Testing? Monitoring? Steve Jones has a few thoughts that we should find ways to do so before our customers.
Guarding Against SQL Injection at the Database Layer (SQL Server)
This article presents a way to check and validate input before using it in your dynamic SQL queries to prevent SQL Injection problems.
Python is good, but not perfect – here are 10 reasons to avoid it
Four years ago I wrote a blog on this site explaining why Python is better than C# and, arguably, most other programming languages. To redress the balance, here are 10 reasons why you might want to avoid getting caught up in Python’s oh-so-tempting coils – particularly when building large, long-lived systems.
Designing SQL Server Pipelines That Are Ready for AI Before You Actually Need AI
Introduction. Why AI Readiness Starts in the Database You probably don’t need machine learning today. Most organizations don’t. You already have reporting dashboards, operational workflows, and business intelligence that work just fine without neural networks or predictive models. That’s not a failure. It’s normal. The problem doesn’t show up immediately. It shows up a few […]
Having a Little Fun at SQL Server Central
Steve reminisces on some of the fun times he's had at SQL Server Central.
SSMS 22 Offline Installation
Beginning with SQL Server Management Studio 21, Microsoft stopped providing the direct download package/binaries to install SSMS, instead it just downloads the SSMS installer. This installer then starts the installation of SSMS and downloads what is needed to install SSMS. Sometimes there may be a need to do an offline installation where you do not have access to the internet. In this article, we walk through the steps to do an offline install of SSMS.
Remotely Engineer Fabric Lakehouse objects: The Fabric Modern Data Platform
In this next installments of the Modern Fabric Data Warehouse, we look at tools for developers.
SQL Server 2025 CREATE EXTERNAL MODEL and AI_GENERATE_EMBEDDINGS Commands Explained
Now that SQL Server 2025 has finally been released to the public, I was finally able to test and learn a lot about this command (named CREATE EXTERNAL MODEL), and I want to share my knowledge with you here. If you’re new to the world of AI, don’t worry, we’ll start with the basics and evolve to where this command fits in!
Can You Let Go of Determinism
As Steve uses AI more, it seems determinism isn't something you get out of many LLMs.
Blogs
TempDB Internals – What’s New (Sql Server 2016 to 2025)
By Vinay Thakur
I wrote about TempDB Internals and understand that Tempdb plays very important role on...
Blog a Day – Day 2: Generative AI, Multimodal Systems, and Agent AI
By Vinay Thakur
continuing from Day 1 where we covered the history of AI and GPT family,...
A Wellbeing Day at Redgate
By Steve Jones
It’s a day off for Redgate today. This is our annual wellbeing day, where...
Forums
A Quick Restore
Comments posted to this topic are about the item A Quick Restore
Guarding Against SQL Injection at the Database Layer (SQL Server)
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Guarding Against SQL Injection at...
Ola Hallengren Index Optimize Maintenance can we have data compression = page
I have a quick question on Ola Hallengren Index Optimize Maintenance . Do we...
Question of the Day
A Quick Restore
While doing some testing of an application, I wanted to reset my environment after doing some testing with this code:
USE DNRTest BACKUP DATABASE DNRTest TO DISK = 'dnrtest.bak' GO /* Bunch of stuff tested here */RESTORE DATABASE DNRTest FROM DISK = 'dnrtest.bak' WITH REPLACEWhat happens if this runs, assuming the "bunch of stuff" isn't anything affecting the instance. See possible answers