AI Helps Me with My Sloppiness
I type fairly well. Well, I type fast, but I do wear out a backspace key relatively quickly on most keyboards. That and a space bar. AI helps me...
2026-07-01
34 reads
Blog Posts
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...
2026-07-01 (first published: 2026-06-18)
412 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...
2026-07-01 (first published: 2026-06-16)
493 reads
Mystery Backups: Estimating Disk Space When All You Have Are .BAK Files
How Do You Determine How Much Disk Space You Need If You’re Handed 18 SQL Server Backups and No History? Happy last day of June, dear reader. Today’s post...
2026-06-30
4 reads
The Goldilocks problem – Materialized Views
I’m sure you’ve all heard the tale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, but I’d like to apply the Goldilocks principle to a database object-namely, a materialized view. You...
2026-06-30
27 reads
5 Starter Projects for Your AI and Data Engineering Portfolio
Reading tutorials is fine. Shipping something is better. If you are trying to break into data engineering or AI, nothing on your resume carries more weight than a GitHub...
2026-06-29 (first published: 2026-06-12)
459 reads
KDA: Echoes of Deception - Case 4
Someone hacked Digitown's municipality and stole classified documents. 45 million rows of router traffic, an IP lookup table, and KQL's anomaly detection to find who did it.
2026-06-29 (first published: 2026-06-15)
152 reads
Blue Sky Programming – The Optimism Trap
Many years ago, before I joined Oracle, I was working on a major modernisation project. We were replacing an existing non-Oracle system with an entirely new Oracle database application...
2026-06-27 (first published: 2026-06-26)
41 reads
Advice I Like: Respect
“Don’t aim to have others like you; aim to have them respect you.” – from Excellent Advice for Living This is an interesting piece of advice. It’s easy to...
2026-06-26
93 reads
EightKB 2026 – Schedule and Registration
Hello Hello, We. Are. Back! The schedule for EightKB 2026 Edition has been announced! We’re kicking off at 1pm UTC on August 20th…here’s the schedule: – N.B. – If...
2026-06-26 (first published: 2026-06-15)
116 reads
Blogs
Methodology for dealing with bad data in production
By Brian Kelley
Pinal Dave wrote up his methodology for what to do when you discover bad...
How to Provision an Azure SQL Database
Aside from spinning up a SQL Server instance container, the free Azure SQL Database...
Claude finds two cryptographic weaknesses (but the sky isn’t falling)
By Brian Kelley
If you haven't seen the announcement, Anthropic was able to utilize Claude (Mythos Preview)...
Forums
Why SQL Server Database Attach fails and how to repair it
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Why SQL Server Database Attach...
Fixing P1 Queries
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Fixing P1 Queries
BIT_COUNT() IV
Comments posted to this topic are about the item BIT_COUNT() IV
Question of the Day
BIT_COUNT() IV
In SQL Server 2025, I run this code:
select bit_count('A')
What is returned? See possible answers