Mala Mahadevan

My name is Malathi, a.k.a Mala - I am a DBA turned BI/Data Science person, working with SQL Server since 6.5. I am also founder of the Louisville SQL Server user group, organizer of 8 SQL Saturdays, Regional mentor for northeast, and 14-year PASS conference attendee. In my spare time I love to garden, travel, read, paint, and do yoga.

Blog Post

Data dictionary script

I restarted speaking with New Stars of Data today – I gave a talk on Database documentation. Below is the script I created to pull metadata into an excel...

2021-03-16 (first published: )

710 reads

Blog Post

Old but not gone…

I am part of a weekly talk show we run at the TriPASS user group, called ‘Shop Talk’. Shop Talk was the brainchild of Kevin Feasel, our key user...

2021-02-25 (first published: )

380 reads

Blog Post

Azure SQL Championship

There is no doubt that this is a time when we all have to be extra aware and work towards keeping our skills aligned with market needs. During this...

2020-10-13 (first published: )

339 reads

Blog Post

PASS – Meanderings

As most people reading this would know…the PASS organization is in a state of crisis now following the decision to go virtual. We are in a place where we...

2020-07-03 (first published: )

190 reads

Blogs

Shifting Mindsets: Why FinOps is Essential for Cloud Efficiency

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As a DevOps practitioner, I’ve always focused on performance, scalability, and automation. But as...

March 2026 SQL Server Security Updates

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On Patch Tuesday, in addition to OS and Office security patches, Microsoft also released...

How Fabric Mirroring Transformed with SQL Server 2025

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When mirroring was first released for Azure SQL Database, it used Change Data Capture...

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Forums

Multiple Deployment Processes

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Multiple Deployment Processes

How to Use sqlpackage to Detect Schema Drift Between Azure SQL Databases

By Kunal Rathi

Comments posted to this topic are about the item How to Use sqlpackage to...

Upgrading Admin Queries

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Upgrading Admin Queries

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Question of the Day

Upgrading Admin Queries

I have a query from a former DBA that we run on SQL Server 2025 to check on database metadata. This query references sys.sysaltfiles. I want to refactor this code to be more modern. Which DMV should I reference instead?  

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