Database Security, People and Processes
Protecting data is not easy, but it is critical. In this article, David Poole discusses database security and the behaviors needed to build secure systems.
2020-01-22
Additional Articles
Removing the Square Bracket Decorations with SQL Prompt
If you avoid illegal characters and reserved words in your identifiers, you'll rarely need delimiters. Sadly, SSMS applies square bracket delimiters indiscriminately, as a precaution, when generating build scripts. Phil Factor provides a handy function that adds quoted delimiters only where they are really needed and then sits back and lets SQL Prompt strip out any extraneous square brackets, in a flash.
2020-01-22
New release: SQL Change Automation 4.1
We’ve heard from users that they really care about static data and were missing the feature in the SQL Change Automation SSMS plugin. In v4.1, we’ve added support for the tracking of static data tables to the SSMS extension, alongside existing support in the VS extension. Maya Malakova has written a technical summary showing how to use this feature. Learn more about the release here.
2020-01-21
Types of SQL Server Indexes
In this tip we will go through each type of index that is available in SQL Server and give an overview as well as advice on which index types fit each particular use case.
2020-01-21
Using Aliases in SQL Prompt
Phil Factor explores the role of table aliases, explaining when they are required, and their general purpose otherwise, the need for sensible naming of aliases, and how SQL Prompt handles them.
2020-01-20
Using Calendars and Dates in Power BI
You can use a host of time-intelligence functions in DAX to calculate everything from simple year-to-date totals to moving averages and average opening and closing balances. In this article, Andy Brown shows how to model various scenarios with calendars and dates, and how to get around some of the issues you may encounter.
2020-01-20
A simple use case for Columnstore Indexes in SQL Server
In this article we look at different use cases for columnstore indexes like when performing SQL Server count * queries.
2020-01-17
Data Categorization for AdventureWorks using SQL Data Catalog
Josh Smith shows how to use SQL Data Catalog to perform a 'first cut' data classification for one your SQL Server databases, identifying all columns that are likely to hold personal or otherwise sensitive data.
2020-01-17
How to Complain Bitterly using SQL Data Generator
How to use reverse regex expressions in SQL Data Generator to fill a text column in SQL Server with fake, but very realistic complaints.
2020-01-16
Introduction to Gaps and Islands Analysis
T-SQL window functions simplify solving many complex queries. In this article, Edward Pollack demonstrates how the functions can be used to find gaps and islands in a dataset.
2020-01-16
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