Articles

External Article

How to Script Dimensions with data build tool (dbt) Macros

In this article, we’ll revisit the dimension models we created. We wrote the entire SQL statement for the dimension by hand, and the dimensions themselves were very rudimentary; they lacked a surrogate key and there were no audit columns (such as insert date and update date). We’ll show you how we can expand the dimensions using Jinja, but also how we can minimize development effort by baking reusable patterns into the Jinja code.

2025-09-03

SQLServerCentral Article

Advanced SQL Server Page Forensics: Detecting Page Splits and Allocations with DBCC PAGE

Page splits are an often-overlooked performance killer in SQL Server. In this article, we take a forensic look at how serial inserts differ from mid-table inserts, revealing why inserting rows out of order causes hidden page splits, increased IO, and fragmentation. Using a wide-column table, we demonstrate both scenarios and decode their impact with page-level analysis.

(1)

You rated this post out of 5. Change rating

2025-09-02 (first published: )

2,724 reads

SQLServerCentral Article

Deprecated but Forgotten: Why SQL Server’s Text, NText, and Image Data Types Still Haunt Your Systems

TEXT, NTEXT, and IMAGE columns have been deprecated for nearly two decades, yet they still silently haunt many SQL Server environments. This article explains their hidden limitations with practical demos and shows why migrating to VARCHAR(MAX), NVARCHAR(MAX), and VARBINARY(MAX) is critical for modern performance, maintainability, and future upgrades.

(4)

You rated this post out of 5. Change rating

2025-09-02 (first published: )

3,339 reads

SQLServerCentral Article

How to Access and Use Azure Key Vault Secrets in an Azure Devops Pipeline

When you run a CI/CD pipeline, you often need confidential values like passwords, authentication tokens, service principal secrets etc. when you want to deploy a certain artefact. You don’t want to store those secrets directly in your pipelines as this might pose a considerable security leak. Instead, you either store them as secret variables, or […]

You rated this post out of 5. Change rating

2025-09-02 (first published: )

1,474 reads

Blogs

TRY_PARSE Limitations: #SQLNewBlogger

By

I got a notification from a question I’d posted at SQL Server Central: Getting...

SQL Server sa Account Security: Rename, Disable & Best Practices

By

SQL Server sa Account Security: Rename, Disable & Best Practices In...

Stanford Emerging Technology Review 2026 Report is out

By

Artificial Intelligence and quantum computing are two areas of emerging technology that receive most...

Read the latest Blogs

Forums

Are You Working More Hours?

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Are You Working More Hours?

Stairway to Reliable Database Deployments Level 6 – Managing Changesets Over Time

By Massimo Preitano

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Stairway to Reliable Database Deployments...

A Limited Startup

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item A Limited Startup

Visit the forum

Question of the Day

A Limited Startup

I add this parameter to SQL Server 2025 in the Configuration Manager:

-mDynamics
What does this do?

See possible answers