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

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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: )

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Blogs

Why your data still can’t answer a simple question 

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Question of the Day

Using OPENJSON

I have some data in a table that looks like this: 

BeerID BeerName    brewer               beerdescription
1      Becks       Interbrew            Beck's is a German-style pilsner beer 
2      Fat Tire    New Belgium          Toasty malt, gentle sweetness, flash of fresh hop bitterness.
3      Mac n Jacks Mac & Jack's Brewery This beer erupts with a floral, hoppy taste
4      Alaskan Amber Alaskan Brewing     Alaskan Brewing Amber Ale is an "alt" style beer
8      Kirin       Kirin Brewing         Kirin Ichiban is a Lager-type beer
If I run this, what is returned? 
select t1.[key]
    from openjson((select t.* FROM Beer AS t for json path)) t1

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