Microsoft On-Premises Data Gateway Administration
As a Microsoft Fabric Administrator, you have the responsibility to manage all the Microsoft Enterprise gateways installed and deployed across your entire data estate.
2026-04-27
Articles
Introducing the Relational Embedding Retrieval Pattern: Storing and Querying Vector Embeddings in SQL Server
Learn about using SQL Server to support AI-enhanced search queries with the Relational Embedding Retrieval Pattern (RERP).
2026-04-24
1,962 reads
Cross-database ownership chaining in SQL Server: security risks, behavior, and privilege escalation
A dangerous privilege-escalation path exists in SQL Server when cross-database ownership chaining, system database defaults, and overly permissive permissions are combined.
2026-04-24
Find SQL Server Agent Jobs that Start Other Jobs
A SQL Server Agent job can start other jobs. Writing jobs this way makes it easy to compartmentalize jobs: start a “child” job only when the “parent” reaches a certain step. Finding these steps can be challenging. There is no field or property in sysjobs or its associated tables to help find child jobs.
2026-04-22
What Power BI DirectQuery does to your SQL Server (and how to fix it)
Power BI DirectQuery can quietly overwhelm your SQL Server. Unlike Import mode, DirectQuery sends live T-SQL for every visual interaction, multiplying queries and placing heavy analytical load on the database. This article explains how to identify the worst offending DirectQuery queries, why the generated SQL is often inefficient, and what you can do from the database side, including indexing, Query Store, and reporting views, to improve performance. It also outlines practical changes on the Power BI side and when DirectQuery is simply the wrong architectural choice.
2026-04-20
4,958 reads
How to minimize downtime in a cloud migration
Pat Wright details how to plan cloud migration with minimal downtime. Learn key cutover strategies, testing methods, and critical questions to avoid data loss and system failure.
2026-04-20
2026-04-17
1,450 reads
How User-Defined Types work in PostgreSQL: a complete guide
I’m sure I’m not alone when I say, sometimes I get sidetracked. In this particular instance, I hadn’t intended to start learning about User-Defined Types (UDT) in PostgreSQL – I just wanted to test a behavior that involved creating a UDT. But, once I started reading, I was hooked. I mean, four distinct UDTs with different behaviors? That’s pretty cool. Let’s get into it.
2026-04-17
How to Draw Line Graphs in SSMS
Ever just need a quick visualization of some numbers to get a rough idea of the trend, like this
2026-04-15
The day-to-day pressures of a DBA team, and how we can work smarter with automation and AI
What a DBA team actually deals with There are many issues a DBA team faces, from servers going down to login access not being requested on time. These are not glamorous problems, but they are the problems that stop everyone else doing their jobs. In a modern environment you would expect a lot of the […]
2026-04-13
2,675 reads
Blogs
When Your Microsoft Fabric Capacity Runs Out: Optimize, Scale Up, Scale Out, or Isolate?
By James Serra
Microsoft Fabric makes it wonderfully easy to put many analytics workloads on one platform....
Accessing the Data API Builder MCP Server from VS Code
By Steve Jones
I recently started playing with the MCP Server for SQL Server, which is a...
From DBA or Data Engineer to AI Engineer: A Realistic Path
If you spend your days tuning queries, managing pipelines, or keeping a production database...
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Question of the Day
BIT_COUNT() V
What does this return on SQL Server 2025?
select bit_count(null)See possible answers