The “Successful Login” Dilemma: Why Your Login Auditing Strategy Might Be Hurting Your Server
From bloated error logs to risky logon triggers, a guide to auditing connections without killing performance.
2026-07-29
1,713 reads
Articles
Time Series Data Mining Example with T-SQL when Adding New Data
Please demonstrate the steps for updating an existing time series dataset used in a prior data mining project with a fresh batch of data. Then, repeat the mining performed for the original dataset with the freshly updated dataset.
2026-07-29
CROSS APPLY Fundamentals: Part 1
Learn the basics of the CROSS APPLY operator with a few examples in this short piece.
2026-07-27
3,100 reads
5 T-SQL features that should already exist (2026 SQL Server wish list)
2026 T-SQL wish list covering native Parquet imports, arrays, OVERLAPS, simpler licensing, and cloud storage
2026-07-27
SQL Agent Job Automated Change Capture Process
Build a process that captures your SQL Agent job history and changes across time.
2026-07-24
1,319 reads
SQL Server Data Warehouse Concepts, Schema Design, and Implementation
A Data Warehouse acts as a centralized repository, is subject oriented, time variant and non-volatile repository. This article covers some concepts that will help you better design these structures.
2026-07-24
Can You Really Downgrade from Enterprise to Standard and Save Thousands? Here's What Happened
A real world story of how someone moved from Enterprise Edition to Standard for not only the SQL Server database engine, but also with SSRS, SSIS, and SSAS.
2026-07-22
3,112 reads
Exposing a SQL injection vulnerability you’ve never heard of
This article documents a SQL injection vulnerability I discovered in sys.sp_dbmmonitorupdate, a Microsoft-signed system stored procedure. For other SQL Server security vulnerabilities I’ve discovered, see the full series here.
2026-07-22
Connect an Azure Function to Azure SQL database Using a Managed Identity
In this article, you’ll learn step-by-step setup, Python code implementation, troubleshooting, and best practices to ensure your solution is secure and scalable.
2026-07-20
1,418 reads
Pros and Cons of Database Sharding for Performance and Maintenance
Large databases usually have a negative impact on maintenance time, scalability and query performance. For maintenance, these large single databases have to be backed up daily while the amount of actual changing data might be small. For performance, tables without correct indexes result in full table or clustered index scans. As the data grows the total query time increase linearly. How can we decrease downtime for the maintenance window for large databases and optimize the performance of daily queries?
2026-07-20
Blogs
Methodology for dealing with bad data in production
By Brian Kelley
Pinal Dave wrote up his methodology for what to do when you discover bad...
How to Provision an Azure SQL Database
Aside from spinning up a SQL Server instance container, the free Azure SQL Database...
Claude finds two cryptographic weaknesses (but the sky isn’t falling)
By Brian Kelley
If you haven't seen the announcement, Anthropic was able to utilize Claude (Mythos Preview)...
Forums
Why SQL Server Database Attach fails and how to repair it
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Why SQL Server Database Attach...
Fixing P1 Queries
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Fixing P1 Queries
BIT_COUNT() IV
Comments posted to this topic are about the item BIT_COUNT() IV
Question of the Day
BIT_COUNT() IV
In SQL Server 2025, I run this code:
select bit_count('A')
What is returned? See possible answers