About me
I have been developing software from my early teens and stayed with technology after leaving school. Initially focussing on software development, networking and IT support type roles, I found...
2017-05-03
27 reads
Art
VirtualBox SQL FCI - Given Network Name Is Unusable
The other day I needed to test some HADR requirements on my local machine so using VirtualBox, I created a...
2017-04-19
2,798 reads
VirtualBox SQL FCI – Given Network Name Is Unusable
The other day I needed to test some HADR requirements on my local machine so using VirtualBox, I created a 2 server Windows 2012 R2 failover cluster with shared...
2017-04-19
24 reads
Moved blog to Ghost
Another year, another blog update lol!... Last year I remember doing a significant version upgrade for my self-hosted Orchard CMS...
2017-04-12
240 reads
Moved blog to Ghost
Another year, another blog update lol!… Last year I remember doing a significant version upgrade for my self-hosted Orchard CMS software on the DiscountASP hosting platform and it all...
2017-04-12
16 reads
Apologies in advance
This is a quick post to apologise in advance if all my historical blog posts get republished.
Recently it appears that...
2017-04-06
326 reads
Olcot and Arratoon Ancestry
I have spent a fair amount of time researching the Olcot and Arratoon ancestry and I am very interested in the family tree, especially pre 1900 in India. If...
2017-04-03
15 reads
Pluralsight = Essential Training
Edit (11-Sep-2016) See comment that pricing tiers have been adjusted since this blog post
I've been aware of Pluralsight for a...
2016-09-11
203 reads
Pluralsight = Essential Training
Edit (11-Sep-2016) See comment that pricing tiers have been adjusted since this blog post I’ve been aware of Pluralsight for a couple of years and as I’m always looking...
2016-09-11
43 reads
Update duplicate xml attribute values to unique value
I was going through some really old blogging ideas and I stumbled over this one and seeing as I love...
2016-06-23
1,087 reads
Blogs
Narrow Task Decomposition in AI Pipeline Agents
A nightly load into sales_fact fails. Ask an orchestrating agent to break down the...
Car Update: August 2026
By Steve Jones
It’s been some time since I provided a car update, so I decided to...
Microsoft Fabric OneLake Shortcuts: When to Use Them and When Not To
By James Serra
An architecture scenario Imagine separate Sales, Finance, Shared Data, and Executive Analytics workspaces. Sales...
Forums
Managing Incidents and Fighting Fires
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Managing Incidents and Fighting Fires
Backing Up a DMK
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Backing Up a DMK
The Quiet Part
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Quiet Part
Question of the Day
Backing Up a DMK
In SQL Server 2025, I have a database with a Database Masker Key (DMK). I want to back up this key and keep a copy offline. When do I have to open this key before running the backup?
See possible answers