PASS Data Summit 2025 Recap
Last week, I attended the annual PASS Data Summit in Seattle. This was the fourth year of the event since Red Gate took over stewardship of PASS after that...
2025-12-05 (first published: 2025-11-24)
22 reads
Tim Mitchell
Using Python Code in SSIS
SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) is a mature, proven tool for ETL orchestration and data movement. In recent years, Python has exploded in popularity as a data movement and...
2025-09-01 (first published: 2025-08-11)
370 reads
T-SQL Tuesday #179 Roundup: The Data Detective Toolkit
Earlier this month, I hosted the monthly T-SQL Tuesday invitation in which I asked, “What’s in your data detective toolkit?” We got some great responses which I’ll recap here,...
2024-10-30 (first published: 2024-10-21)
277 reads
T-SQL Tuesday #179: What’s In Your Data Detective Toolkit?
Most of us who work with data have, at least a few times, been presented with a challenge to explore and attempt to make sense of a poorly-defined set...
2024-10-01
29 reads
Reflections on My First-Ever Presentation, Fifteen Years Later
May 3rd represents a small but significant milestone in my career. It was 15 years ago today, on May 3, 2008, when I delivered my first public technical presentation....
2023-05-19 (first published: 2023-05-03)
223 reads
My Office Setup
At the PASS Summit a few weeks ago, I had a great chat with some folks about our home office setups. More and more of us are working from...
2022-12-16 (first published: 2022-12-01)
289 reads
Returning to PASS Summit
In just a couple of weeks, the PASS Summit will return to Seattle, Washington. This one will be extra special, since it’s going to be the first in-person Summit...
2022-10-31
12 reads
Creating a Generic SSRS Report
Creating useful reports is part art and part science. On one end of the spectrum, you have visually appealing and highly customized reports and dashboards that are truly works...
2022-04-13 (first published: 2022-03-31)
444 reads
What Stephen King Taught Me About Data Storytelling
I’ve been a fan of macabre fiction writer Stephen King since I first picked up The Dark Half sometime in the early 1990s. Since then I’ve read dozens of...
2022-03-20
16 reads
Let’s Talk About Your Development Environment
Let’s talk about your development environment. Specifically, I’d like to chat with you about the virtual space where your data architecture team, software developers, and information curators do their...
2021-06-07
26 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