Being Responsible for Code

How responsible should developers be for their code? Facebook has an interesting way of looking at their engineers' performance.

Less Energy through Better Design

When I attended SQL Saturday #131 at the Chandler Gilbert Community College, I was struck by a few design elements...

SQL Saturday #131 Recap

This past weekend I attended a SQL Saturday in the desert. SQL Saturday #131 was held in Phoenix, AZ

It’s April,...

You need to run DBCC CheckDB regularly

You never know when you’ll encounter corruption. It can happen at any time, usually due to some sort of hardware...

Cool Data Visualization

I attended a course from Edward Tufte a few years ago on Data Visualization, and while I learned some neat...

Security Outside the Database

Database security needs to improve, and while SQL Server continues to get better, there is more work to do. However there are plenty of security issues outside the database that also need to be addressed.

The Mentoring Experiment – Cycle 2

It’s been a long time, almost a year since Andy Warren and I kicked off The Mentoring Experiment. We had...

Creating a Symmetric Key in SQL Server

Symmetric keys in SQL Server are recommended for encrypting data in columns. They are a good balance of security and...

Technology for Sharing

Technology has been great for helping us work more efficiently by better sharing resources. Steve Jones sees this as both good and bad in different ways as well as a way of providing new opportunities.

Smelly Power

Power is a limited resource, but one that's required for computing. Microsoft has a new idea for generating power data centers that Steve Jones likes.