The end of an era – why I chose not to renew my MVP
Two years ago, two things happened within a few days of each other. I retired from 3Cloud going on full time disability due to ALS, and I was awarded...
2026-05-26
65 reads
Blog Posts
Claude.ai vs Claude API
You have used Claude. But which Claude? The Claude app (claude.ai, the desktop and mobile apps) is the chat product you talk to. The Claude API is the developer...
2026-05-25 (first published: 2026-05-13)
503 reads
Crash-Consistent Snapshot Cloning - Hyper-V Edition
If you’ve been following my T-SQL Snapshot Backup series, most of what I’ve covered requires SQL Server to participate in the snapshot: the write IO freeze, the metadata backup,...
2026-05-25 (first published: 2026-05-08)
195 reads
PostgreSQL: Diagnosing and Fixing a Sequential Scan with No Filter Predicate
A sequential scan is not always a problem — PostgreSQL's planner often chooses one correctly for small tables or queries that return most of a table's rows. The dangerous...
2026-05-25
721 reads
AWS RDS Aurora - our first approach
When starting with AWS RDS Aurora for managing relational databases in the cloud, many data engineers face the challenge of leveraging its cutting-edge features while maintaining performance and reliability....
2026-05-22 (first published: 2026-05-04)
190 reads
Data Engineering Books Worth Having on Your Shelf (or your tablet)
Good documentation gets you started. Good books get you deep. After years of working with cloud data platforms, SQL engines, and machine learning pipelines, a handful of titles keep...
2026-05-22 (first published: 2026-05-13)
406 reads
Session Materials for Techorama & DataGrillen 2026
I’ve uploaded the slides for my Techorama session Microsoft Fabric for Dummies and my DataGrillen session Building the €100 data warehouse with the Azure Data Platform to Github. If...
2026-05-22
51 reads
The Book of Redgate: Profits
Redgate is a for-profit company. We look to make money by building and selling tools that help you. If we do a good job, we make money. If we...
2026-05-22
57 reads
PowerShell Strikes Back: Know Your Quotes, Young Padawan
This is Week 1 of PowerShell Strikes Back – a four-week May series for SQL Server DBAs who have dabbled in PowerShell but never stopped to nail down the...
2026-05-20 (first published: 2026-05-04)
505 reads
Understanding Fabric MCP
Model Context Protocol, or MCP, is one of those technical ideas that sounds more complicated than it really is. The easiest way to think about it is this: MCP...
2026-05-20 (first published: 2026-05-04)
510 reads
Blogs
Don’t Fear the Technology
By Brian Kelley
The concern that a particular technology is going to destroy the world seems to...
Creating a Custom SQL Server Security Checklist Using the DoD STIG
The STIG is detailed, which is a good thing, but I found myself wanting...
Creating a Local Model Chatbot on Windows
By Steve Jones
After my session at VSLive last week, I had a few questions from the...
Forums
Querying Multiple Tables for the Same Information
I have about 100 Tables that are all suffixed with _Modify. These tables record...
Make It Routine
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Make It Routine
Finding Gaps in Sequential Data Using SQL Server
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Finding Gaps in Sequential Data...
Question of the Day
Negative and Positive Numbers
If I want to know whether a number of negative, positive, or zero, what is the easiest way to get this in T-SQL?
See possible answers