A Spread of Vacation
I’m off on vacation today. Which is a little weird as I just got back from a week long vacation in May, cruising with my family. Usually my trips...
2026-07-03
47 reads
How AgentDBA Identifies Backup Failures
Every DBA has a box like this. Sitting untouched for months. Nobody’s proud of it, nobody’s fixed it, it’s just there — a handful of small compliance gaps that...
2026-07-03 (first published: 2026-07-02)
70 reads
Tip: Expanding a SQL statement
In all recent versions of the database you can call DBMS_UTILITY.EXPAND_SQL_TEXT to get the “true” version of a SQL that the database will run. It takes your SQL as...
2026-07-03 (first published: 2026-07-02)
156 reads
AI Helps Me with My Sloppiness
I type fairly well. Well, I type fast, but I do wear out a backspace key relatively quickly on most keyboards. That and a space bar. AI helps me...
2026-07-01
58 reads
WITH clause gets a 26ai boost!
By way of background, a while back I did video called “My New Favourite Join” on the LATERAL clause. The reason I like it is that it lets you...
2026-07-13 (first published: 2026-07-01)
636 reads
Mystery Backups: Estimating Disk Space When All You Have Are .BAK Files
How Do You Determine How Much Disk Space You Need If You’re Handed 18 SQL Server Backups and No History? Happy last day of June, dear reader. Today’s post...
2026-06-30
37 reads
Automatic Index Compaction
Index maintenance has always meant nightly jobs and a window you have to defend. Azure SQL’s new Automatic Index Compaction targets page density directly — so I tested it.
2026-07-10 (first published: 2026-06-30)
330 reads
The Goldilocks problem – Materialized Views
I’m sure you’ve all heard the tale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, but I’d like to apply the Goldilocks principle to a database object-namely, a materialized view. You...
2026-06-30
153 reads
Monday Monitor Tips: Virtual Machine Usage and Cost
One of the things I’ve been requesting for a number of years is cost information. I could see this coming in 2015 with the move to the cloud and...
2026-07-13 (first published: 2026-06-29)
230 reads
Advice I Like: Respect
“Don’t aim to have others like you; aim to have them respect you.” – from Excellent Advice for Living This is an interesting piece of advice. It’s easy to...
2026-06-26
114 reads
Blogs
T-SQL Tuesday #203: Risk and Reward
By Steve Jones
This is timely, as I’m currently on a boat in the Adriatic taking a...
dataMinds Connect 2026 – Slides & Scripts
You can find the slides and SQL scripts for my session “Spice up your...
How to Clear the SSMS Cache (SSMS 21 and Later)
By SQLPals
How to Clear the SSMS Cache (SSMS 21 and Later) Updated...
Forums
Risk Vs Reward, The never ending ROI discussion.
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Risk Vs Reward, The never...
Trigger isn't working
Hi, I have a trigger, that works fine elsewhere but is not working at...
Question of the Day
Hyperscale Replicas IV
In Azure SQL Database Hyperscale Edition, how many geo-replicas can be created?
See possible answers