The Second Career
From a well-built cockney who knew how to avoid wheel clamps, to an ex-member of an elite anti-riot unit, some of the best DBAs have a surprising diversity of skills and experiences, according to Phil Factor.
2017-02-13
127 reads
Phil Factor
- Interests: Motorbikes, Beer, gardening, conservation, Local history.
2017-01-23
129 reads
Keeping up to, and down with, Date
It is foolish to insist on reading only up-to-date books on technology. Nothing beats getting the broad perspective.
2017-01-09
114 reads
The Toolchain for the Job?
Phil Factor ponders the use of toolchains in automation, and wonders if there might not be a better way.
2016-12-19
125 reads
2016-12-05
107 reads
2016-11-21
189 reads
I can ODBC clearly now
ODBC is the closest thing we have to a universal standard for data access across platforms, applications and data sources. So why doesn't DocumentDB support it?
2016-11-07
127 reads
Teaching a dog to sing
To survive the inevitable downturns in the IT industry, Phil Factor argues that a IT manager needs to take time to maintain technical skills. It is not enough to understand development; you have to be able to do it.
2016-09-12
118 reads
Towards a Single Management Stack
Phil Factor argues that with both SQL Server and PowerShell now running on Linux, the latter becomes increasingly important in achieving the goal of a single management stack for databases across all hosting environments.
2016-09-05
89 reads
SQL Server docks in Linux
The Database Engine on the Data Platform departs for Linux. A late arrival but worthwhile, says Phil Factor.
2016-08-29
77 reads
Blogs
DiskANN Experiment — Exploring Entry Points and Graph Neighborhoods
Introduction I was experimenting with vector search in SQL Server 2025 using approximately 3.8...
T-SQL Tuesday #203: Risk and Reward
By Steve Jones
This is timely, as I’m currently on a boat in the Adriatic taking a...
dataMinds Connect 2026 – Slides & Scripts
You can find the slides and SQL scripts for my session “Spice up your...
Forums
Communication, For Incidents and Life
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Communication, For Incidents and Life
PostgreSQL psql Meta Commands: Tables
Comments posted to this topic are about the item PostgreSQL psql Meta Commands: Tables
Building a Support Ticket Triage Report with IIF() and CHOOSE() in SQL Server
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Building a Support Ticket Triage...
Question of the Day
PostgreSQL psql Meta Commands: Tables
Which of the following psql meta commands (also called backslash or slash commands) will provide information about tables within a database?
See possible answers