Building AI Governance and Policies- First Steps

AI has moved from experimental to operational in record time for many organizations. In industries like fintech, healthcare, and retail where sensitive PII (personally identifiable information) and relational databases are the backbone of daily operations, this innovation speed to adopt AI brings enormous opportunity, but also significant risks

SQL Server, Heaps and Fragmentation

Tables with a SPARSE Column and Consumption

Why Tech Events Matter for Data Pros (and why I’m grateful)

I just got back from the Redgate Summit events in New York City, where I had the chance to present, swap stories, and nerd out with a lot of brilliant data folks. I came home energized… and then promptly slept for 14 hours on Thursday. That’s the best kind of exhaustion in my book.  The […]

Using Ollama on Windows 11 as an Alternative to Public LLMs

In my ongoing war against shadow AI, I’ve been testing out alternatives that most everyone can use, no matter what your technical expertise.  Although somewhat limited depending on your resources available, (laptop CPU/GPU, memory, etc.) If you want to try the newest open models without sending your prompts to the cloud, or you just want […]

Everyone Wants a Piece of the AI Pie

Swiping through LinkedIn feels like watching a campsite suddenly flooded with s’mores. Every other ad, i.e. post, promises the next miracle AI service, platform, or “AI-powered” widget. It’s a frenzy that says: “If buzzwords paid the bills, we’d all be billionaires already.”  I can’t fault the reasoning, there’s a lot of buzz out there telling […]

Critical Data and Insomnia

Most evenings I spend some time soaking in the tub and reading articles/watching videos on InfoSec, Data Protection and AI.  It may sound like a terrible way to spend some time, but I always find it educational and I’m in shock by the lack of concern around data security, and yet….I’m not.  For decades, the […]

Page Compression, Unique Identifiers and Speed

The Double-Edged Sword of AI and Data Democratization

Agentic AI is often hailed as a game-changer by organizations, bringing autonomous decision-making, intelligent automation, and powerful predictive capabilities. However, as organizations rush to leverage these technologies, those dealing with critical data in relational databases, documents and datasets, especially personally identifiable information (PII) face a harsh reality: moving AI projects from proof-of-concept to production is […]

Always On Availability Groups and Capabilities