Microsoft has spent years working on building a reliable and dependable patch process for their software. While some products have had more sporadic updates, SQL Server has moved to a fairly regular schedule. Not quite a predictable "Patch Tuesday" schedule, but you can count on a CU arriving every month or two for SQL Server. […]
2020-01-03
816 reads
A short article to help you quickly find a CU that isn't the latest one.
2019-12-19
1,415 reads
Security is often something people think about only after they have had a problem. Given that the average cost of a data breach is $3.92 million (SecurityIntelligence 2019) and ransomware attacks have increased 97% over the past 2 years (PhishMe 2019), the "if it's not broke, don't fix it" approach can clearly be catastrophic. Here […]
2019-10-07
9,366 reads
This week Steve Jones recommends installing Cumulative Updates. If you can test them.
2016-05-02
86 reads
Planning on patching my SQL Servers to the latest service pack, but not sure how to complete this for a environment that is using database mirroring? In this tip, will outline the environment and then walk through the process of patching mirrored servers.
2012-06-22
3,569 reads
Next Monday, February 9, 2026, my one-day live online training SQL Server Query Tuning...
By Steve Jones
One of the features we advocates have been advocating for is a better way...
Microsoft fixed the AVX instruction issue in SQL Server 2025 CU1. The container now...
Comments posted to this topic are about the item 25 Years of SQL Server...
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Decoded Value
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Deploying SQL Server Developer Edition...
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