Back at Small Data SF in 2025
Today I’m in San Francisco at Small Data SF 2025. I went to the conference last year and thought it was a great event. Watching people talk about data...
2025-11-05
27 reads
Blog Posts
Beyond Pipelines: How Fabric Reinvents Data Movement for the Modern Enterprise
For decades, enterprises have thought about data like plumbers think about water: you build pipelines, connect sources to sinks, and hope the pipes do not burst under pressure. That...
2025-11-05 (first published: 2025-10-17)
486 reads
Connect resiliently to SQL Server
Why you should connect resiliently to SQL Server
Transient failures happen — in the cloud (Azure SQL) and on-prem. A resilient connection strategy lets your app recover gracefully instead of...
2025-11-05 (first published: 2025-10-13)
471 reads
Scooby Dooing Episode 9: The Case of the Artificially Intelligent Villain
Welcome back, my fellow sleuths, to my mystery-inspired blog series! I’m having a ton of fun writing these, and I hope you’re enjoying the ride through SQL Server’s haunted...
2025-11-03 (first published: 2025-10-17)
340 reads
SQL Server Alerts
Don’t Let Trouble Sneak Up on You Most SQL Servers run quietly. Until they don’t. By the time someone notices an application outage or a failed backup, you’re...
2025-11-03 (first published: 2025-10-15)
370 reads
A New Word: Foilsick
foilsick – adj. feeling ashamed after revealing a little too much of yourself to someone – allowing them too clear a view of your pettiness, your anger, your cowardice,...
2025-10-31
59 reads
Down the Rabbit Hole: Dealing with Ad-Hoc Data Requests
"But I don’t want to go among mad people," Alice remarked."Oh, you can’t help that," said the Cat: "we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.""How do you know...
2025-10-31 (first published: 2025-10-13)
357 reads
Prompt AI helping with Auditing
I had a conversation with a customer asking this question: how can I tell who called a stored procedure so I can audit the action? I decided to see...
2025-10-31 (first published: 2025-10-15)
309 reads
Measuring What Matters: Operationalizing Data Trust for CDOs
Trust is the currency of the data economy. Without it, even the most advanced platforms and the most ambitious strategies collapse under the weight of doubt. For Chief Data...
2025-10-30
41 reads
A Small LLM Fail
Another test with Copilot in SSMS (v22 P3) that didn’t go so well. This one surprised me. This is part of a series of experiments with AI systems. Looking...
2025-10-29
34 reads
Blogs
It’s 2026 and I’m retired, so lets get Visual Basic 6.0 to run on Windows 11
In 1999 I released my first commercial software product. ShutOff 2000 was a Windows...
Car Update October 2026
By Steve Jones
This month I want to look at a few of the things I’ve seen...
SQL Server 2016 Has Reached End of Support. Now What?
By SQLPals
SQL Server 2016 Has Reached End of Support. Now What? On...
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PostgreSQL 19 Is Late
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Hyperscale Replicas V
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A Heavy Heart
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Question of the Day
Hyperscale Replicas V
I have an Azure SQL Database Hyperscale Edition system running with a geo-replica enabled. Can I create a new geo-replica based on the current secondary geo-replica?
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