Why Use TRY_PARSE(): #SQLNewBlogger

Someone asked why I would use TRY_PARSE after I posted a question at SQL Server Central: Getting the Average. Isn’t is slower? A fair question. This quick post looks...

A Guatemalan's Guide to Drinking Coffee Properly

My mugI grew up surrounded by coffee farms in Guatemala and somehow spent most of my adult life drinking whatever was closest, usually instant, usually while standing over the...

T-SQL Tuesday #201 - Temp Tables, Friend or Foe?

T-SQL Tuesday is a monthly blog party hosted by a different community member each month. This month, Jeff Taylor
(blog) asks us for our take on temp tables:

So, do you...

Excellent article on securing msdb

Fabiano Amorim has written an excellent article at Simple Talk on securing msdb. Here's why you should read it if you're a DBA or security professional.

T-SQL Tuesday #201: Temp Tables

This month we have a new host, which I am grateful for. So many people have stopped blogging that it’s a challenge to keep this going. Jeff Taylor has...

When Do You Reach For A #temp Table?

I needed to do some research because there is more to #temp tables than simply creating one and using it. As I started digging into the topic, I realized...

Accept the no and move on

Here is a short emotional intelligence (EI) post for today, courtesy of Seth Godin. When we are rejected, whatever the situation, many of us want to know why. We...

Don’t Fight with AI

I was recently trying to handle a simple task with a few AI tools to see how well things worked. I realized that AI isn’t great for everything and...

Narrow Task Decomposition in AI Pipeline Agents

A nightly load into sales_fact fails. Ask an orchestrating agent to break down the diagnosis and it will usually stop at the first two subtasks that come to mind:...

Car Update: August 2026

It’s been some time since I provided a car update, so I decided to showcase a few things I’ve learned about my cars since the last one. In this...