Microsoft Build 2026 announcements
Once again there were a number of Microsoft Build announcements related to data and AI, and some were very impressive. Below are my favorites. I am prioritizing the data...
2026-06-18
32 reads
Blog Posts
T-SQL Tuesday #199: Roundup
A good week ago I hosted the monthly T-SQL Tuesday blog party. I invited the community the blog about the idea of what would happen if we would need...
2026-06-18
10 reads
Where Is My SQL Agent? Running Scheduled Jobs Against Azure SQL Database
One of the first things I review when I inherit a new SQL Server environment is the SQL Agent jobs. I can learn a tremendous amount about an organization...
2026-06-18 (first published: 2026-06-16)
30 reads
Data Skew in Data Engineering: What It Is and How to Fix It
You kick off a distributed job expecting it to finish in minutes — but one task keeps running while all others have long since completed. The culprit is almost...
2026-06-17 (first published: 2026-06-01)
440 reads
Error Deploying GraphQL in Fabric: dm_exec_describe_first_result_set
A while ago we suddenly had an error while trying to deploy one Fabric workspace to another using fabric-cicd. The issue was with a GraphQL object and the following...
2026-06-17 (first published: 2026-06-01)
86 reads
AgentDBA vs Critical SQL Server
It’s 07:43. Someone’s already left a message. “Something’s wrong with the DB server.” You open the terminal and go to work. This post is about what happens next —...
2026-06-16
31 reads
Finally Cleaning Up Dropbox: Moving Almost a TB to Google Drive with rclone
I’ve had a Dropbox account for years. Like a lot of people, I started using it when it was one of the easiest ways to sync files across machines...
2026-06-16 (first published: 2026-06-15)
32 reads
AI Experiments: Parsing Payment Memos
As part of my running the SQL Saturday charitable foundation, I get sponsorship money from vendors. Primarily Microsoft and AMD, but I hope to change that in the future....
2026-06-15
15 reads
Distance Metrics for Semantic Similarity Searches in SQL Server 2025
Next up in my series talking about The Burrito Bot is diving into the different distance metrics used to calculate how a vector generated from a query compares to...
2026-06-15 (first published: 2026-05-28)
160 reads
Killing Explicit Sort Steps in Redshift with the Right SORTKEY
You paste a slow Redshift query plan into PlanTrace and one of the tuning insights reads "SORTKEY optimization candidate", pointing at an explicit sort step that's adding cost you...
2026-06-15
8 reads
Blogs
Five Ways Redshift Serverless Quietly Eats Your Budget
It is Friday, the queries are running, and nobody is watching the bill. That...
A Career of Memories
By Steve Jones
Annabel retired from Redgate Software this week. Across most of my career at Redgate,...
Rethinking Index Maintenance: Why avg_fragmentation_in_percent Is Outdated and What You Should Do Instead
By Tim Radney
As a SQL Server DBA with years of experience tuning production environments, I’ve seen...
Forums
Changes, Happiness, and a Few Tears
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Changes, Happiness, and a Few...
BCP on Linux
Comments posted to this topic are about the item BCP on Linux
You Probably Don't Need a Vector Database
Comments posted to this topic are about the item You Probably Don't Need a...
Question of the Day
BCP on Linux
When running bcp on Linux, what is the field terminator?
See possible answers