Disable the sa login in SQL Server (and sleep better)
Disable the sa login in SQL Server (and sleep better)If you run SQL Server in 2025 and your sa login is still usable, you’re giving attackers a giant, blinking...
2025-10-21
17 reads
SQL Development Wizard
Connect resiliently to SQL Server
Why you should connect resiliently to SQL Server
Transient failures happen — in the cloud (Azure SQL) and on-prem. A resilient connection strategy lets your app recover gracefully instead of...
2025-10-14 (first published: 2025-10-13)
74 reads
Truncate Table Pitfalls
Truncate Table Pitfalls
Truncating a table can be gloriously fast—and spectacularly dangerous when used carelessly. If you want the speed without the face-palm moments, here’s a practical, interview-ready guide to...
2025-10-13 (first published: 2025-10-08)
199 reads
DBAs should never run SSMS under their everyday Windows account
DBAs should never run SSMS under their everyday Windows account
If you open SSMS under the same Windows identity you use for email, browsing, and chat, you bring all that...
2025-10-22 (first published: 2025-10-07)
1,016 reads
Why Developers Shouldn’t Have sysadmin access in SQL Server
Why Developers Shouldn’t Have sysadmin access in SQL Server
7 reasons—and exactly what to do instead
It can feel “faster” to hand developers sysadmin. In reality, it’s like giving them the master...
2025-10-06
354 reads
SELECT *
SELECT * feels convenient, but in SQL Server it bloats I/O, burns network bandwidth, blocks covering-index usage, and makes code brittle when schemas change. Specify only the columns you...
2025-10-02
29 reads
The login is from an untrusted domain and cannot be used with Windows authentication
SSPI handshake failed with error code 0x8009030c, state 14 while establishing a connection with integrated security; the connection has been...
2019-03-18 (first published: 2019-03-05)
14,509 reads
SQL Server 2016 has reduced the NoSQL JSON “advantage” over SQL Server
Microsoft has finally implement support for JSON data in SQL Server 2016 and in Azure SQL Database. In a previous...
2016-12-20
3,630 reads
Invoke-SqlCmd and error results
Don’t trust Invoke-SqlCmd and error resultsI love to call Invoke-sqlcmd from powershell but one must beware of the risk of...
2016-12-19
26,849 reads
Don’t trust Invoke-SqlCmd and error results
Don’t trust Invoke-SqlCmd and error results
I love to call Invoke-sqlcmd from powershell but one must beware of the risk of...
2016-12-13
32 reads
Blogs
Creating a Striped Backup Set with AI
By Steve Jones
I needed to test a striped backup, so I decided to ask the AI’s...
Trace Flag 1448 – Lessons from a Technical Interview
By gbargsley
In SQL Server environments where transactional replication runs alongside Always On Availability Groups (AGs),...
Disable the sa login in SQL Server (and sleep better)
Disable the sa login in SQL Server (and sleep better)If you run SQL Server...
Forums
Create an HTML Report on the Status of SQL Server Agent Jobs
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Create an HTML Report on...
SQLPS and syspolicy_purge_history job
The SQLPS.exe file has gone AWOL on 2 of my 4 SQL servers, ie,...
Be Wary of Data
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Be Wary of Data
Question of the Day
Locking Hierarchies
You have a table [dbo].[orders] without a Clustered Index (Heap). The table does not have any other nonclustered indexes! You rund the following command in Read Committed Isolation Level:
SELECTo_orderdate,
o_orderkey,
o_custkey,
o_storekey
FROMdbo.orders
WHEREo_orderkey = 3877;