Designing SQL Server ETL Pipelines That Don't Break at Scale
A few lessons learned in building ETL pipelines and tricks to ensure you can easily maintain these over time.
2026-05-15
3,171 reads
ETL (Extract Transform and Load)
Building a Real-Time Analytics Pipeline with Azure Stream Analytics and SQL Server
Learn how a real time analytics solution for ETL and reporting can be built with SQL Server, Power BI, and Stream Analytics.
2026-01-26
1,315 reads
Think LSNs Are Unique? Think Again - Preventing Data Loss in CDC ETL
When using only an LSN to track which changes you have processed, you can lose data. This article shows how to avoid this problem.
2025-12-15
2,748 reads
A gentle introduction to dbt
Over the past years, the tool dbt – short for data build tool – has become quite popular in the data engineering world for handling such an ELT process. dbt takes on the role of the “T”, meaning it’s responsible for transforming the data in a certain data store.
2024-12-23
Time-Series Data Analysis with Apache Druid
Learn the basics of Apache Druid and how it can be used to ingest data into a data lake.
2023-11-10
14,641 reads
What I Wish Everyone Knew About ETL Processes - Traditional to Modern Cloud Solutions
Learn about the evolutionary journey of ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) from traditional processes to modern cloud solutions.
2023-10-18
Unpivot Data Using Python
This article looks at manipulating data using Python to unpivot data received in a cross tab format.
2023-06-30
3,437 reads
Advantages of Kappa architecture in the Modern Data Stack
A comparison of the lambda and kappa architectures for real time ingestion and analysis of big data.
2023-06-19
5,687 reads
Python 3 Script for Generating SQL Insert Statements from CSV Data
This Python 3 script is designed to take CSV file data pasted into the csv_data variable and generate SQL insert statements that can be used to insert the data into a MySQL database. The script is easy to use and can save you a lot of time when working with large amounts of data.
2023-05-08 (first published: 2023-05-05)
5,871 reads
The Art of Data Ingestion - Part 1
Data movement is a fundamental piece of a data engineer’s duties, and recently I’ve been thinking about the art of data movement. What are some of the most important pieces that a data engineer needs to think about when confronted with data ingestion? There is of course data exporting as well, and in that case, […]
2022-11-11
6,145 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...
Forums
Managing Incidents and Fighting Fires
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Managing Incidents and Fighting Fires
Backing Up a DMK
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Backing Up a DMK
The Quiet Part
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Quiet Part
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?
See possible answers