T-SQL Tuesday #199: Roundup
A good week ago I hosted the monthly T-SQL Tuesday blog party. I invited the community the blog about the idea of what would happen if we would need...
2026-06-19 (first published: 2026-06-18)
28 reads
No Shortcuts for the SQLCMD Batch Terminator: #SQLNewBlogger
I was messing around with SQLCMD and I realized something I hadn’t known. I’ve never tried it, but the batch separator has to be separate, which I’ll show. Another...
2026-07-08 (first published: 2026-06-17)
289 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)
495 reads
AgentDBA vs Critical SQL Server
It’s 07:43. Someone’s already left a message. “Something’s wrong with the DB server.” You open the terminal and go to work. This post is about what happens next —...
2026-06-16
173 reads
Finally Cleaning Up Dropbox: Moving Almost a TB to Google Drive with rclone
I’ve had a Dropbox account for years. Like a lot of people, I started using it when it was one of the easiest ways to sync files across machines...
2026-06-16 (first published: 2026-06-15)
101 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
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
Killing Explicit Sort Steps in Redshift with the Right SORTKEY
You paste a slow Redshift query plan into PlanTrace and one of the tuning insights reads "SORTKEY optimization candidate", pointing at an explicit sort step that's adding cost you...
2026-06-15
15 reads
AI Experiments: Parsing Payment Memos
As part of my running the SQL Saturday charitable foundation, I get sponsorship money from vendors. Primarily Microsoft and AMD, but I hope to change that in the future....
2026-06-15
23 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
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