Steve Jones

My background is I have been working with computers since I was about 12. My first "career" job in this industry was with network administration where I became the local DBA by default. I have also spent lots of time administering Netware and NT networks, developing software, managing smaller IT groups, making lots of coffee, ordering pizza for late nights, etc., etc.

I currently am the editor of SQL Server Central and an advocate/architect at Redgate Software. I am also the President of SQL Saturday, maintain the T-SQL Tuesday monthly party, and remember our colleagues at sqlmemorial.org.

You can find out more about me on my blog (www.voiceofthedba.com) or LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com/in/way0utwest)
  • Interests: yoga, reading, biking, snowboarding, volleyball

Blog Post

Stupid Things I Did With AI: ASCII Art

I ran across this article recently (https://www.gatesnotes.com/meet-bill/source-code/reader/microsoft-original-source-code) and it has a great opening piece of ASCII Art. I have a screenshot here: For some reason, I thought, “I should...

2026-01-20 (first published: )

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Architecting Power BI Solutions in Microsoft Fabric

Business Intelligence (BI) tools like Power BI are used by a wide range of professionals, creating diverse and complex scenarios, and finding the right solution can be daunting, especially when multiple approaches exist for a single use case. The author distills his 17 years of experience on various data platform technologies in this book to walk you through various Power BI usage scenarios.

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2026-01-16 (first published: )

4,404 reads

SQLServerCentral Editorial

Eight Minutes

When I was at the Small Data 2025 conference, one of the speakers was talking about their work with AI technologies. This person uses it a lot in their day job, often to complete tasks that they would have struggled to work on in the past, mostly because of time constraints, but also a lack […]

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2026-01-16

162 reads

Blogs

The FinOps Lifecycle: From Budgeting to Reporting

By

Working in DevOps long enough teaches you two universal truths: That’s exactly why I...

Finding and Updating Duplicate IDs: #SQLNewBlogger

By

Finding duplicates was an interview question for me years ago, and I’ve never forgotten...

Optimising Costs: Strategies for Efficient Cloud Resource Management

By

Over time, I’ve realised that one of the hardest parts of cloud management isn’t...

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Forums

Fun with JSON II

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Fun with JSON II

Changing Data Types

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Changing Data Types

Answering Questions On Dropped Columns

By Cláudio Silva

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Answering Questions On Dropped Columns

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Question of the Day

Fun with JSON II

I have some data in a table:

CREATE TABLE #test_data
(
    id INT PRIMARY KEY,
    name VARCHAR(100),
    birth_date DATE
);

-- Step 2: Insert rows  
INSERT INTO #test_data
VALUES
(1, 'Olivia', '2025-01-05'),
(2, 'Emma', '2025-03-02'),
(3, 'Liam', '2025-11-15'),
(4, 'Noah', '2025-12-22');
If I run this query, how many rows are returned?
SELECT t1.[key] AS row,
       t2.*
FROM OPENJSON(
     (
         SELECT t.* FROM #test_data AS t FOR JSON PATH
     )
             ) t1
    CROSS APPLY OPENJSON(t1.value) t2;

See possible answers