Stairway Series

Stairway to DAX and Power BI

Stairway to DAX and Power BI - Level 14: DAX CALCULATE() Function: The Basics

  • Stairway Step

Business Intelligence Architect, Analysis Services Maestro, eight-year Microsoft Data Platform MVP and author Bill Pearson introduces the DAX CALCULATE() function, discussing its syntax, basic uses and operation. He then provides hands-on exposure to CALCULATE(), focusing largely upon its most basic uses in evaluating an expression in a context that is modified by specified filters.

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2026-04-15 (first published: )

7,850 reads

Stairway to U-SQL icon

Stairway to U-SQL Level 22: Creating a Custom Extractor

  • Stairway Step

Throughout this series, we’ve consistently dealt with delimited text files; comma and tab, for instance. We’ve used the U-SQL built-in extractors to process these files. But what if we need to deal with different types of file, like JSON, XML or fixed width? That’s where custom extractors come in. U-SQL provides us with the ability […]

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2020-07-01

1,572 reads

Stairway to TDE icon

Restore a Backup of a TDE Database to Another Server: Level 2 of the Stairway to TDE

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In the second level of the stairway to TDE, we examine how you can restore your databases on another instance after moving the encryption certificate.

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2026-04-15 (first published: )

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Stairway to TDE icon

Transparent Data Encryption Using Certificates and EKM - Level 1 of the Stairway to TDE

  • Stairway Step

The first level of the Stairway to TDE will explain how the feature works and how to set this up on one of your instances and databases.

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2026-04-15 (first published: )

11,916 reads

Stairway to SQLCLR

Stairway to SQLCLR Level 2: Sample Stored Procedure and Function

  • Stairway Step

In the second level of our Stairway to SQLCLR, we look at how to enable the SQLCLR in SQL Server. We then build an assembly, store procedure, and a function that can be called from your T-SQL code.

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2020-07-09 (first published: )

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Secure Communications

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Question of the Day

Secure Communications

As of June 2026, what is the best version of TLS to use with SQL Server?

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