Getting Started with Azure SQL Developer on Macbook

The idea behind Azure SQL Developer is for anyone to build, iterate, and test locally at no cost. This means NO Azure subscription to deal with and NO credit...

Power BI Performance in 2026: A Practical Guide to Faster Semantic Models and Reports

Originally published April 2022; substantially updated July 2026. This post is a complete replacement for and update to my April 2022 post, Power BI Performance Features. That post focused...

A New Word: Mauerbauertraurigkeit

mauerbauertraurigkeit – n. inexplicable urge to push people away, even close friends whose company you generally enjoy, like a poker player who keeps folding a promising hand in order...

Advice I Like: Responsibility

“The foundation of maturity: Just because it’s not your fault doesn’t mean it’s not your responsibility.” – from Excellent Advice for Living I’ve worked with a lot of people...

Programmatic Tool Calling with the Claude SDK

Programmatic Tool Calling with the Claude SDK

Every morning somebody on the team runs the same check. Thirty tables in the staging schema, and the only thing anyone wants to...

Think Twice Before Enabling Fabric’s Inbound Network Protection

Fabric inbound network protection involves two tenant-level controls: Private Link and Block Public Internet Access. But enabling them disables several features.
The post Think Twice Before Enabling Fabric’s Inbound Network...

How to Provision an Azure SQL Database

Aside from spinning up a SQL Server instance container, the free Azure SQL Database is another great tool for learning SQL. You can even use it for low-traffic or...

Methodology for dealing with bad data in production

Pinal Dave wrote up his methodology for what to do when you discover bad data in production. If you’ve never been in this situation, having a plan beforehand is...

Adding an HTTP MCP Server to VSCode

I wrote earlier this week about the SQL MCP Server using the Data API Builder. In that post I showed how to query the MCP server from VSCode, but...

AI Experiments: Claude Solved a DAB Issue

I’m sure many of you are using AI regularly, perhaps chatting, perhaps using some sort of agent. I’m doing the same, but in this case, I had it tackle...