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

Geneology with SQL Graph – I

I have been working a lot of SQL Graph related queries and applications of the graph data concept to the extent possible within SQL Server’s graph capabilities. Genealogy, or...

2019-10-17 (first published: )

1,197 reads

Blog Post

Graph – Shortest Path

‘Shortest path’ is by far the most feature of SQL Graph for now. What does this even mean? ‘Shortest path’ is the term accorded to the shortest distance between...

2019-10-08 (first published: )

762 reads

Blog Post

Simple Graph Queries

In this post we saw how to create some graph tables with data. In this I will explore simple queries off of this data and how they compare with...

2019-10-01 (first published: )

455 reads

Blogs

Microsoft announces new cybersecurity AI multi-model

By

Yesterday, July 27, 2026, Microsoft announced a new cybersecurity effort called Project Perception. Included...

Getting the SQL Server MCP Server Running

By

If you’ve wanted a SQL Server MCP server for your databases, it’s available. The...

Introducing azsql-migration-test: Test and Validate Azure SQL Database Migrations

By

Introducing azsql-migration-test, a small open-source CLI that validates your Azure SQL Database migrations against...

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Forums

Symmetric Key Encryption

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Symmetric Key Encryption

The “Successful Login” Dilemma: Why Your Login Auditing Strategy Might Be Hurting Your Server

By Pablo Echeverria

Comments posted to this topic are about the item The “Successful Login” Dilemma: Why...

Building Your Own Software

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Building Your Own Software

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Question of the Day

Symmetric Key Encryption

If I run this statement in SQL Server 2025, how is the password encrypted?

CREATE SYMMETRIC KEY MySymmetricKey
WITH ALGORITHM = AES_256,
KEY_SOURCE = 'My secret key source passphrase',
IDENTITY_VALUE = 'My secret identity value'
ENCRYPTION BY PASSWORD = 'S&perS#cretP@ssword7';
GO

See possible answers