Ramblings about data communities and your contributions, no excuses
I have been active in the data community throughout my career. I have met people and made friends in the process. As I look back on it, I am...
2026-02-26
17 reads
Blog Posts
Are you getting value from your reporting?
Do you spend so long manipulating your data into something vaguely useful that you don’t have the time to focus on analysing the what the data is telling you?...
2026-02-25 (first published: 2026-02-14)
204 reads
Identity Columns Can’t Be Updated: #SQLNewBlogger
I’m not sure I knew identity column values could not be updated. I ran into this while trying to solve a problem recently and had to check the error...
2026-02-25
34 reads
Using CAT for Testing of Data Agents
In last months one of the scenarios where you can use AI has been to build an agent which would answer your questions by looking into your data. It...
2026-02-25 (first published: 2026-02-15)
216 reads
Fabric Cost Analysis (FCA)
Monitoring costs in Microsoft Fabric can be trickier than it first appears. You might assume it’s just a flat fee per capacity (easy, right?), but real-world usage tends to...
2026-02-23 (first published: 2025-12-24)
328 reads
Git forked
Forgive me for the title. Mentally I’m 12. When I started my current day job, I certainly didn’t expect to write this many blog posts about Git. I don’t...
2026-02-23 (first published: 2026-02-12)
410 reads
dataMinds Saturday 2026 – Slides
At Saturday the 21st of February I’m presenting an introduction to dimensional modelling at dataMinds Saturday. It’s a topic close to my heart, and I’ve always wanted to present...
2026-02-20
18 reads
The Book of Redgate: SQL Server Central
It was neat to stumble on this in the book, a piece by me, just a few years after Redgate acquired SQL Server Central. I’ll let the words speak...
2026-02-20 (first published: 2026-02-13)
296 reads
tSQLt Test Adapter for Visual Studio 2022+
I have had a number of requests for me to update the tSqlt Test Adapter over the years so it would work with more recent versions of Visual Studio....
2026-02-20 (first published: 2025-12-30)
267 reads
Claude AI Convinced Me Not to Build an iPad App
I coach volleyball and I do a lot of stat stuff on paper. I decided recently to see if I could find a way to more easily automate things....
2026-02-18 (first published: 2026-02-09)
517 reads
Blogs
SQL Server Journey Part 2: Modern Era (2017 – 2026) – AI/Cloud First
By Vinay Thakur
Following up on my Part 1 baseline, the journey from 2017 onward changed how...
Google Moves Up Post-Quantum Cryptography Timeline
By Brian Kelley
In cryptography, the RSA and ECC algorithms which we use primarily for asymmetric cryptography...
The Book of Redgate: No Politics
By Steve Jones
In today’s world, this might mean something different, but in 2010, we had this...
Forums
An Unusual Identity
Comments posted to this topic are about the item An Unusual Identity
Prompt Requests
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Prompt Requests
T-SQL in SQL Server 2025: JSON_OBJECTAGG
Comments posted to this topic are about the item T-SQL in SQL Server 2025:...
Question of the Day
An Unusual Identity
What values are returned when I run this code?
CREATE TABLE dbo.IdentityTest2
(
id NUMERIC(10,0) IDENTITY(10,10) PRIMARY KEY,
somevalue VARCHAR(20)
)
GO
INSERT dbo.IdentityTest2
(
somevalue
)
VALUES
( 'Steve')
, ('Bill')
GO
SELECT top 10
id
FROM dbo.IdentityTest2 See possible answers