2023 in Review – Steve’s Perspective
2023 was another transition year as I continue to navigate my ALS with work. It has become harder to write or at least more work is required. I use...
2024-01-05
51 reads
Blog Posts
A New Word: agnosthesia
agnosthesia – n. the state of now knowing how you really feel about something, which forces you to sift through clues hidden in your own behavior, as if you...
2024-01-05
85 reads
Creating a Scripts Folder in SQL Compare
While I was at a conference recently, someone asked me about the Scripts Folder feature in SQL Compare and how to set that up. This post just looks at...
2024-01-05 (first published: 2023-12-20)
548 reads
SELECT FORMAT(COUNT(1),’N’) FROM TableName WITH (NOLOCK);
Alternate title: How do I tell how far I am on that command? This little command (frequently with a WHERE ... Continue reading
2024-01-05 (first published: 2023-12-26)
1,083 reads
Skipping SQL Bits 2024
SQL Bits has been my favorite data platform event for years. Both it and the PASS Data Community Summit hold special places in my heard and I enjoy going,...
2024-01-04
31 reads
Create failed for Availability Group
Ever since the release of Always On Availability Group (AG or HADR) in SQL Server 2012 the adoption ratio is increasing. A lots of my clients too are adopting...
2024-01-03 (first published: 2023-12-25)
4,363 reads
Kusto (KQL) for Azure SQL Audit
According to Rod Trent, Kusto is named after Jacques Cousteau. He says, “We are exploring the depths of our data” by searching and querying our Azure log data. His...
2024-01-03 (first published: 2023-12-26)
323 reads
Testing Microsoft Fabric - Part 4
After several discussions with the Microsoft team and chatting with Sunil Sabat about the testing I was conducting, the conclusion was...
2024-01-03
4 reads
Career Plan for 2024
It’s a holiday today, but I’m dropping this as I spent last week working on it. I wrote about having a career plan on Friday, with a few notes...
2024-01-01
44 reads
Clearing Intellisense in SQL Prompt
I got this question from an account rep: if a customer is using SQL Prompt and a snippet, for example AT, that was also used as an alias, is...
2024-01-01 (first published: 2023-12-13)
279 reads
Blogs
Advice I Like: Respect
By Steve Jones
“Don’t aim to have others like you; aim to have them respect you.” –...
Blue Sky Programming – The Optimism Trap
Many years ago, before I joined Oracle, I was working on a major modernisation...
Setting Up a Mac for Data Engineering and AI Work
If you work with data pipelines, SQL, notebooks, or machine learning models, a Mac...
Forums
SQL Art, Part 4: Happy 4th of July — A British DBA's Guide to Celebrating a War We Don't Talk About
Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Art, Part 4: Happy...
locking down agent for new user on our dev machine
hi , a new user wants to be able to add sql agent jobs...
SQL Server Enum Implementation: A Single-Row View Strategy for Avoiding Magic Values
Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Server Enum Implementation: A...
Question of the Day
BIT_COUNT I
In SQL Server 2025, I have a table (dbo.UserPermission) that contains this data:
UserID UserPermissions 15 23 37What is returned when I run this code:
select bit_count(UserPermissions) as PermissionCount from dbo.UserPermission where UserID = 3;See possible answers