Storing Passwords in a Secure Way in a SQL Server Database

Measures such as using special characters and numbers within a password are of little use to security if passwords are then stored in an insecure way. Sergey Gigoyan explains how to encrypt and store passwords in a SQL Server database.

SQL and R

There is plenty that is novel and perhaps foreign to a new R user, but it's no reason to abandon your hard-earned SQL skills! In this article, Casimir Saternos explains that not only can you easily retrieve data from SQL Sources for analysis and visualisation in R, but you can also use SQL to create, clean, filter, query and otherwise manipulate datasets within R, using a wide choice of relational databases.

Follow-Up on Cursor Options

In this follow-up to a previous article, Aaron Bertrand reiterates that – while you should never just accept the defaults – you really should think about which options are most applicable to your scenario.

Automatic UNDO in Oracle

Automatic UNDO Management isn't voodoo or black magic, although it can seem that way when it isn't clearly understood. How does Oracle decide how many UNDO segments to create at startup, and what is the underlying goal of the process? David Fitzjarrell investigates.

Power Query Formula Language in Power BI Desktop

The Power Query Formula Language (PQFL) is a functional language that drives the Power BI transformations, and allows you to create mashup queries from scratch. In this article, Rob Sheldon demonstrates how to use it in Power BI Desktop to extract data from its source, filter rows, specify the columns, clean the data, and create visualisations.

How to Avoid Conditional JOINs in T-SQL

Relational databases go out of their way to execute SQL, however bad the crimes against Codd and relational theory within the query might be. The 'conditional join' can be executed, but at great cost. As always, it is much better to sit back and restate the problem in a set-based way - Dwain Camps explains.

Creating Dashboards for Mobile Devices with Datazen

In this fourth installment, Arshad Ali demonstrates creating filters, publishing dashboards to the Datazen server and creating drill-through dashboards.

Install SQL Server Management Studio with Web Installer without Internet Access

One of the new features of SQL Server 2016 is the introduction of a Web Installer for the client tools. In this article, Daniel Farina goes through the entire process of downloading and installing the client tools even on machines without internet access.

Build Your Own Resource Monitor in a Jiffy

Practical Processor Selection for SQL Server 2014/2016 OLTP Workloads

Glenn Berry explains how you can do some simple analysis to help decide the exact processor to should choose for a new database server, taking into consideration workload and budget constraints.