This article explores the 'shadow copy' and 'disk virtualization' services built into the Windows operating system and explains a basic solution demonstrating how the technology is used to copy the data and log files for a live SQL Server database into an 'image', from which we can create multiple, lightweight copies, or clones, of the original database.
2025-10-22 (first published: 2021-04-29)
6,183 reads
Here's a teaser about Azure SQL Managed Instance, which isn't quite PaaS or IaaS, but isn't as locked down as you might think. This is the introduction to a three part series to follow.
2025-08-27 (first published: 2025-06-18)
3,788 reads
In Part 1, I explored how to bend SQL Server Agent to our will and peek under the hood of Azure SQL Managed Instance (SQL MI), gaining full OS access to the container (all without relying on xp_cmdshell). But once I realized what kind of door I'd opened, curiosity pushed us further, tempting us to […]
2025-07-17 (first published: 2025-07-16)
474 reads
In this next part of the series on Managed Instance, we see how to discover a bit about the internals of how the instance is being run. Learn how to kill and respawn a Managed Instance.
2025-06-27
1,132 reads
Two days of Data, Beer and Bratwurst. What did it bring me, find out by reading this photo-rich article.
2024-05-24
454 reads
2023-04-24
573 reads
The migration to a different VCS should not be underestimated, as there is a lot more involved than just switching tools, and that’s what Tonie Huizer covers in this article.
First, the team needed to migrate the monolithic repos over to Git, second the team needed to make sure we had a branching strategy and workflow in place.
It involved a big process change for the team as well, but this switch is mandatory to make full use of branch-based database development.
2023-02-08
7,157 reads
A look back at the PASS Data Community Summit in 8 slides from Tonie Huizer.
2022-11-28
134 reads
By Steve Jones
Redgate is a for-profit company. We look to make money by building and selling...
I’ve uploaded the slides for my Techorama session Microsoft Fabric for Dummies and my...
If you've ever loaded a 2 GB CSV into pandas just to run a...
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We create the following table and then insert some records in it:
create table t1 ( id int primary key, category char(1) not null, product varchar(50) ); insert into t1 values (1, 'A', 'Product 1'), (2, 'A', 'Product 2'), (3, 'A', 'Product 3'), (4, 'B', 'Product 4'), (5, 'B', 'Product 5');What happens if we execute the following query in both Sql Server and PostgreSQL?
select id,
category,
string_agg(product, ';')
over (partition by category order by id
rows between unbounded preceding and unbounded following) as stragg
from t1; See possible answers