Dealing with Supervision
Working with someone that micro-managers you or watches your every action can be hard. Steve Jones has a few thoughts.
2017-04-06 (first published: 2013-02-04)
266 reads
Editorial
DBA Hypochondria
It is easy to become overwhelmed by server symptoms (aka metrics), in the forlorn hope that the more we collect, the clearer a picture we'll assemble of what ails the server. We should, of course, be looking at the whole patient.
2013-02-04
145 reads
Baselines
It can be hard to analyze performance without a baseline. This week, Steve Jones asks how you might use your baseline to better determine what problems you are having with your SQL Server.
2013-02-01
719 reads
A New Type of Colocation Facility
Microsoft is working on their generation 4 data centers, which might be a great idea for companies if they can implement a private cloud.
2013-01-31
182 reads
The Knowledge Graph
Google has a new project to use a "database of everything" to help you learn more.
2013-01-30
200 reads
Acing an Audit
Audits for technology groups can be time consuming and stress employees out. An article Steve Jones finds says an insurance company only needed 30 minutes to ace their audit.
2013-01-29
191 reads
Still 32
There is likely still a lot of 32-bit software out there, even as the x86 platform appears to be dying away. Steve Jones notes that you'll likely be dealing with 32/64 bit issues in your career.
2013-01-28
120 reads
Not Pulling the Plug Out
Phil Factor on his renewed appreciation for the "customer-focused" culture of the Data Platform Group at Microsoft
2013-01-28
80 reads
Geeky Oscars
This Friday Steve Jones takes a break from serious technical discussions. With the Oscar nominees announced there were lots of films left out of the awards. Are there some of these you'd recommend?
2013-01-25
98 reads
Serverless Software
Today Steve Jones talks about the future of software development and how it might not require developers to know anything about servers.
2013-01-24
165 reads
Blogs
Narrow Task Decomposition in AI Pipeline Agents
A nightly load into sales_fact fails. Ask an orchestrating agent to break down the...
Car Update: August 2026
By Steve Jones
It’s been some time since I provided a car update, so I decided to...
Microsoft Fabric OneLake Shortcuts: When to Use Them and When Not To
By James Serra
An architecture scenario Imagine separate Sales, Finance, Shared Data, and Executive Analytics workspaces. Sales...
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Backing Up a DMK
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BIT_COUNT in SQL Server
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Question of the Day
Backing Up a DMK
In SQL Server 2025, I have a database with a Database Masker Key (DMK). I want to back up this key and keep a copy offline. When do I have to open this key before running the backup?
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