From the Air Canada chatbot lawsuit to the infamous Chevy dealership pricing fiasco, this article breaks down the six real reasons RAG systems fail in production – and the five architectural patterns high-performing AI teams use to make them trustworthy, grounded, and production-ready.
2026-07-03
I have a 2-node failover cluster instance running on Windows Server 2019 Standard edition. I have a requirement to add a new SAN disk to the SQL Server failover cluster instance (FCI), and then I need to move a user database to that newly added shared disk. Can you show the steps required to add a new disk to the FCI and move the user database?
2026-07-01
User-defined functions (UDFs) in Power BI let you build reusable, automated tests for your semantic models — so you catch broken measures, duplicate rows, and faulty relationships before they reach your reports. This article walks through how to use UDFs alongside PQL.Assert to standardize testing across your team, and how to automate those tests with Power Automate or a Fabric Notebook.
2026-06-29
I used the guide in a previous tip on Install SQL Server 2008 on a Windows Server 2008 Cluster Part 1 to install a SQL Server 2008 on a Windows Server 2008 failover cluster (WSFC). Now, I would like to upgrade and migrate my SQL Server 2008 failover clusters to SQL Server 2022 running on Windows Server 2022. What is the process for installation and configuration?
2026-06-26
When we want to use AI-based comparisons of text, via vector search in SQL Server, we need to first generate embeddings for the text. An embedding is a numeric representation of meaning, usually represented by vectors. In this article, I’ll show you how to use Ollama to host a server locally that can be used to generate embeddings.
2026-06-24
This in-depth look at the encryption tools available in SQL Server shows you how to protect data by encrypting it at rest with Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) and in transit with Transport Level Security (TLS). You will know how to add the highest levels of protection for sensitive data using Always Encrypted to encrypt data also in memory and be protected even from users with the highest levels of access to the database. The book demonstrates actions you can take today to start protecting your data without changing any code in your applications, and the steps you can subsequently take to modify your applications to support implementing a gold standard in data protection.
2026-06-22 (first published: 2023-01-12)
3,624 reads
Learn how to deploy SQL Server on Kubernetes using Docker Desktop on Windows. Unlock powerful capabilities for your database.
2026-06-22
Grant Fritchey explains the concept of ‘unknown unknowns’, points out what to watch out for in a cloud migration, and offers proven strategies to help your migration go as smooth as possible.
2026-06-22
The LLM gateway pattern is a thin service layer that sits between your app and large language model (LLM) providers, centralizing every AI call through a single entry point. It gives you immediate control over routing, logging, retries, fallbacks, and cost tracking – preventing the chaos of scattered integrations, unclear billing, and provider lock-in as your system scales. Learn all you need to know about the LLM gateway pattern in this article.
2026-06-19
You were minding your own business, and all of a sudden it happened.
2026-06-17
By Steve Jones
I recently started playing with the MCP Server for SQL Server, which is a...
If you spend your days tuning queries, managing pipelines, or keeping a production database...
I’ve been rebuilding my three-site SQL Server demo lab, and I ran into something...
Has anyone written a wrapper function (or similar) around STRING_AGG() to allow the retrieval...
Putting this here as we're currently on SQL Server 2019 installed on Windows Server...
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Never is Not the Policy
I have added a few indexes to one of my tables in SQL Server 2025:
ALTER TABLE dbo.CustomerContact
ADD CONSTRAINT PK_CustomerContact
PRIMARY KEY (CustomerID);
-- Create index on CustomerEmail
CREATE INDEX IX_CustomerContact_CustomerEmail
ON dbo.CustomerContact (CustomerEmail);
CREATE INDEX IX_CustomerContact_CustomerPhone
ON dbo.CustomerContact (phone);
I then do this to disable one index:
alter index IX_CustomerContact_CustomerPhone on dbo.CustomerContact disableI see this when I check the index status:
I decide to rebuild all indexes with this command:
ALTER INDEX ALL ON dbo.CustomerContact rebuildAfter I do this, what will I see for the index status? See possible answers