Chris Yates

Chris Yates is a Database Administration Manager with over thirteen years of experience in the SQL industry. His experience includes design and implementation of both OLTP and OLAP solutions as well as assessment and implementation of SQL Server environments for best practices, performance, and high availability solutions accompanied by a strong development background. He enjoys helping others in the SQL Server community and does this by contributing on several SQL forums, creating “The SQL Professor”, and speaking at several SQL functions. His passion and focus is not only with technology but also helping others along their way and career path.

Blogs

Narrow Task Decomposition in AI Pipeline Agents

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A nightly load into sales_fact fails. Ask an orchestrating agent to break down the...

Car Update: August 2026

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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

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An architecture scenario Imagine separate Sales, Finance, Shared Data, and Executive Analytics workspaces. Sales...

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Forums

Managing Incidents and Fighting Fires

By Pat Wright

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Managing Incidents and Fighting Fires

Backing Up a DMK

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Backing Up a DMK

The Quiet Part

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Quiet Part

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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?

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