Implementing Type 4 Slowly Changing Dimensions in SQL Server
Learn about a Type 4 Slowly Changing Dimension in this article by Dinesh Asanka.
2026-09-16
4,206 reads
Articles
SQL Server login failures: how to monitor, report, and alert on them
This guide walks through how to pull login failure data using sys.xp_readerrorlog, filter it by time and error type, parse it into readable columns, aggregate repeat offenders, and automatically email a summary report — turning a passive log file into an active security and troubleshooting tool.
2026-09-16
Optional Parameter Plan Optimization in SQL Server 2025: Fixing the Kitchen-Sink Search Procedure
See how SQL Server 2025 uses Optional Parameter Plan Optimization to create separate plans for selective and unfiltered searches, how to verify the dispatcher and variants, and when dynamic SQL or recompilation is still the better choice.
2026-09-14
2,582 reads
Database Animations: What’s a Residual Predicate and Why Is It Bad?
Normally when you're looking at an execution plan, and you see an index seek followed by a key lookup, that means it's running relatively quickly.
2026-09-14
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.
2026-09-11
2,399 reads
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.
2026-09-11
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 […]
2026-09-09
2,258 reads
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.
2026-09-09
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?
2026-09-09
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 […]
2026-09-07 (first published: 2023-09-18)
6,107 reads
Blogs
DiskANN Experiment — Exploring Entry Points and Graph Neighborhoods
Introduction I was experimenting with vector search in SQL Server 2025 using approximately 3.8...
T-SQL Tuesday #203: Risk and Reward
By Steve Jones
This is timely, as I’m currently on a boat in the Adriatic taking a...
dataMinds Connect 2026 – Slides & Scripts
You can find the slides and SQL scripts for my session “Spice up your...
Forums
Communication, For Incidents and Life
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Communication, For Incidents and Life
PostgreSQL psql Meta Commands: Tables
Comments posted to this topic are about the item PostgreSQL psql Meta Commands: Tables
Building a Support Ticket Triage Report with IIF() and CHOOSE() in SQL Server
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Building a Support Ticket Triage...
Question of the Day
PostgreSQL psql Meta Commands: Tables
Which of the following psql meta commands (also called backslash or slash commands) will provide information about tables within a database?
See possible answers