Reading SQL Server File Headers with DBCC FILEHEADER

I’ve been doing a deep dive into SQL Server on-disk structures lately, and one of my favorite rabbit holes is revisiting Paul Randal’s series on file header pages. If...

Did You Really Name That Default?

Ten years (and a couple jobs) ago, I wrote about naming default constraints to avoid having SQL Server name them for you. I closed with the following statement:

SQL Server...

GROUP BY ALL – Is it ALL you ever need?

You have probably seen a couple of cool GROUP BY features that came with Oracle Database 26ai. You can check out the short video below but since you’re on...

The Intersection Between DevOps and FinOps

DevOps is about shortening the system development lifecycle. Plan faster, build faster, test faster, deploy faster. But while we accelerate delivery, why not shorten the expense lifecycle as well?...

T-SQL Tuesday #197 – An impactful session or two from a conference – RECAP

Thanks to everyone who joined the blog party this month. I noticed three themes in the responses. Every response had one or more of these themes woven into their...

Why your data still can’t answer a simple question 

Every organization I talk to has the same problem dressed up in different clothes. Somewhere in the business, a decision maker is sitting on a question that the data...

Case Studies: Real-World Success Stories of FinOps Implementation

Learning any kind of theory is easy, but adapting FinOps and watching it rescue a chaotic cloud environment is where it gets interesting. FinOps is about building a culture...

Finding the Next Sequence Value: #SQLNewBlogger

I saw a question asking about the next sequence value and decided to try and answer it myself. I assumed this would be easy, and it was, but I...

The OneLake catalog in Fabric: Explore, Govern, Secure

Once your Fabric tenant grows past a few workspaces, data discovery gets weird fast. Duplicates multiply. People stop trusting what they find. And security teams start hearing things like,...

The Rise of “Post Regret”: Why More Teams Are Regretting Their SQL Server to Postgres Migration

As a data nerd who’s spent the last 25+ years helping organizations keep their databases running smoothly, I’ve had this conversation more times than I can count: “We’re moving...