Understanding Zonal Redundancy in Azure SQL MI
Do you know what happens when you enable zonal redundancy for your SQL managed instance? Lets define it first (in the context of Business-Critical tier) – zonal redundancy is...
2025-07-16
89 reads
All About SQL
Azure SQL Managed Instance: Boost Performance with Read-Scale Out
The Business Critical tier of Azure SQL Managed Instance offers the read-scale out feature enabling you to distribute read-only workloads such as reporting and analytics across built-in replicated secondary...
2025-07-15
110 reads
Secure Azure SQL Server Backups Using Managed Identities
I do believe most people know about the ability to backup your SQL server databases to URL (from Azure VMs). If you recall you would use the storage key...
2025-05-09 (first published: 2025-04-23)
373 reads
Microsoft Entra Authentication for Azure PostgreSQL
Straight from Microsoft’s documentation “Microsoft Entra authentication is a mechanism of connecting to Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server by using identities defined in Microsoft Entra ID. With Microsoft...
2025-02-12 (first published: 2025-02-03)
270 reads
Minimize Downtime with SQL MI Disaster Recovery
I speak to many people who use cloud technologies, especially database tech and how little consideration they give to their MISSION CRITICAL Databases that run in the cloud and...
2024-10-18
37 reads
Snowflake + Azure blob
Let’s go back to data platforms today and I want to talk about a very common integration I see nowadays, Azure Blob Storage linked to Snowflake via a storage...
2024-10-18 (first published: 2024-10-04)
166 reads
Blockchain + RWAs
Blockchain technology is still at the hype stage for an emerging technology cycle, it gets a bad image from all the dodgy web3 “crypto” fake projects out there (based...
2024-09-05
17 reads
WHAT IS A SPV?
Why am I focussing on RWA (real world assets) as the next big thing? The WEF predicted that by 2027, 10% of the world’s GDP could be stored on...
2024-08-09
21 reads
Tech in 2030
What will the technology world look like in 2030? Cloud computing will naturally be the backbone of the world but I think with variants in “decentralising” concepts. By this...
2024-08-09 (first published: 2024-07-31)
121 reads
Azure SQL MI License free?
A common setup when leveraging the cloud is to use the cloud for Disaster recovery (DR) purposes, some say it becomes a logical extension of your on-prem / data...
2024-03-11 (first published: 2024-02-27)
442 reads
Blogs
Don’t Miss Out – SQL Server Query Tuning Fundamentals Starts Next Monday!
Next Monday, February 9, 2026, my one-day live online training SQL Server Query Tuning...
Monday Monitor Tips: SQL Auditing Preview
By Steve Jones
One of the features we advocates have been advocating for is a better way...
SQL Server 2025 CU1 Fixes the Docker Desktop AVX Issue on macOS
Microsoft fixed the AVX instruction issue in SQL Server 2025 CU1. The container now...
Forums
25 Years of SQL Server Central
Comments posted to this topic are about the item 25 Years of SQL Server...
The Decoded Value
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Decoded Value
Deploying SQL Server Developer Edition in Kubernetes: A Cost-Effective Alternative to RDS
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Deploying SQL Server Developer Edition...
Question of the Day
The Decoded Value
In SQL Server 2025, what is returned from this code:
DECLARE @message VARCHAR(50) = 'Hello SQL Server 2025!'; DECLARE @encoded VARCHAR(MAX); SET @encoded = BASE64_ENCODE(CAST(@message AS VARBINARY(1000))); SELECT BASE64_DECODE(@encoded)See possible answers