PASS Summit 2024 – Wednesday
A common theme in the PASS Summits I've attended is community and that's definitely true this year. It's one of the reasons I have loved coming when I can....
2024-11-07
40 reads
Databases – Infrastructure – Security
PASS Summit 2024 – A Very Different World
The last data centric conference I attended was the PASS Summit in 2019. A few months later, much of the world went on lockdown due to COVID. Since then,...
2024-11-06
30 reads
Heading to 2024 PASS Summit
I am able to head back to Seattle for the PASS Summit this year. I would love to meet up with friends and colleagues. I shouldn’t be too hard...
2024-10-29
20 reads
Tell me the positives of your solution
I still have a tendency to talk about all the cons of a proposed solution I don’t believe is the optimal one. There’s an old saying that “no one...
2024-11-08 (first published: 2024-10-29)
173 reads
Build Recovery into the Design
It's like disaster recovery (and business continuity) planning is the end-of-term research paper that the professor mentioned on the first day of class, but which most students don't start...
2024-10-23 (first published: 2024-10-10)
238 reads
When It’s No Longer Viable
Sometimes a solution is no longer viable because there isn’t a path forward and sometimes a solution isn’t viable because there are better options out there from the organization’s...
2024-10-09
21 reads
When It’s Still Viable
If a technology is still viable, don’t overlook it. Don’t get caught up chasing the “shiny” or the “perfect” solution just because you can.
2024-10-08
22 reads
A word on misogyny/sexism in cybersecurity/IT
Recently, on a post celebrating a female professional earning a significant achievement within the cybersecurity field, another individual (male) commented wondering if this was due to DEI. The one...
2024-10-11 (first published: 2024-09-24)
270 reads
Reducing Meetings and Making Them More Productive
I’m sick of meetings and I know many other folks are, too. Every time a knowledge worker (such as IT or cybersecurity but also business) has to go to...
2024-08-23 (first published: 2024-08-09)
377 reads
A word about IT/cybersecurity and mental health
Just as it's important to take care of our physical health (and I'm guilty of neglecting that), it is important to take care of our mental health, too. Also,...
2024-06-10 (first published: 2024-05-20)
299 reads
Blogs
Narrow Task Decomposition in AI Pipeline Agents
A nightly load into sales_fact fails. Ask an orchestrating agent to break down the...
Car Update: August 2026
By Steve Jones
It’s been some time since I provided a car update, so I decided to...
Microsoft Fabric OneLake Shortcuts: When to Use Them and When Not To
By James Serra
An architecture scenario Imagine separate Sales, Finance, Shared Data, and Executive Analytics workspaces. Sales...
Forums
Backing Up a DMK
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Backing Up a DMK
The Quiet Part
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Quiet Part
BIT_COUNT in SQL Server
Comments posted to this topic are about the item BIT_COUNT in SQL Server
Question of the Day
Backing Up a DMK
In SQL Server 2025, I have a database with a Database Masker Key (DMK). I want to back up this key and keep a copy offline. When do I have to open this key before running the backup?
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