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

SQLServerCentral Article

T-SQL in SQL Server 2025: The UNISTR Function

I am not much for working in languages other than English. That's my native language and I know little about others. However, the last few years I find myself using emojis more and more in quick communications as they seem to add some fun to the interaction. And those interactions need to be stored in […]

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2025-12-05

437 reads

Blog Post

PASS Keynote Shots

Rodney Kidd took some great shots of the keynote and published an album here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/127113040@N04/albums/72177720330695911 A few of my favorites: Here’s one of the 8 ball and keynote (and...

2025-12-04

16 reads

SQLServerCentral Editorial

SQL Server Licensing is Simple

Over the years I've had no shortage of licensing questions for SQL Server. At times it's felt a little crazy. Look at the licensing guide. Choose EE or SE and the number of cores. Then check if you're using VMs. Oh, and consider the cloud, and which cloud you're running a workload on. It's simple […]

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2025-12-03

265 reads

Blog Post

Advice I Like: Failure

If it fails where you thought it would fail that is not a failure. – from Excellent Advice for Living This is a great quote, especially for those of...

2025-11-28 (first published: )

436 reads

Blogs

Microsoft Fabric Data Agents: Bringing Structured and Unstructured Data Together

By

Most enterprise questions do not live neatly in one place. The numbers may be...

Keeping Redshift System Table History Past 7 Days with S3 Tables

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Redshift keeps its SYS_* monitoring views for seven days in cluster, which is fine...

Updating the Data API Builder

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I was updating my session for the Data API Builder (DAB) recently, mostly to...

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Forums

Parameter Sensitive Plan Optimization vs. Parameter Sniffing: What SQL Server Fixes and What It Doesn't

By vgupta

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Parameter Sensitive Plan Optimization vs....

Hyperscale Replicas I

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Hyperscale Replicas I

The End of Summer

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item The End of Summer

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Question of the Day

Hyperscale Replicas I

What types of secondary replicas are available for the Azure SQL Database Hyperscale edition?

See possible answers