JSON indexing in SQL Server 2025: how it works and current limitations

This guide has everything you need to know about JSON indexing in SQL Server 2025: what it is, how it works, and current limitations.

Looking for New Blood

You may not be old, but I sure am. As I travel around to all the different conferences to speak, whether we're talking a dev conference, SQL Server, or PostgreSQL, one of the topics that keeps coming up is age. The age of the organizers. It's mostly the same people putting on events for the […]

How Can SQL Server Detect Application Errors When Developers Can’t?

How a simple Extended Events session can turn you from a silent guardian to a developer’s best ally. There is an old, undeniable paradox in the life of a Database Administrator: If you do your job perfectly, nobody remembers you exist, only when you resolve problems. When queries are fast, backups are pristine, and the […]

When the Token Meter is Zero

DBAKevlar disccusses the new product from Perplexity and Nvidia that just shipped on August 25th. If you haven’t been paying attention its goal is businesses whose entire generative AI solution has been what the AI bubble is betting on.

Learn From History

I've just spent a week in the UK visiting the Redgate HQ with my fellow advocates. I'm really blessed to get to work with such a great bunch of people. A couple of the conversations we had stuck with me and I'd like to share them here. Sitting in the midst of Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, UK, […]

Stairway to Reliable Database Deployments Level 6 – Managing Changesets Over Time

As database changesets accumulate over time, they gradually become more than deployment artifacts. This level explores how a well-organized changeset library evolves into a replayable representation of the database’s structural history, supporting not only reliable deployments but also reconstruction, auditing, and long-term maintainability. Through practical examples and a real-world case study, it shows why maintaining coherent Create and Rollback scripts continues to provide value long after a successful production deployment.

The Service Name

VACATION!

Yeah, I've got the Go-Go's running in my head because I'm going on vacation tomorrow (holiday for you UK types). I've been slogging through a really dense book, War in Human Civilization. Total recommendation. Get it. Read it. However, I'm right near the end and there's been a lot of discussion about the impact of […]

AI Observability Challenges in FinOps as a DBA

I was performing research for requested AI work and noticed that I was viewing the risks from a database perspective.  As the saying goes in the tech industry, “Once a DBA always a DBA…”  As foreign as some of the views were, much of it feels familiar and I simply begin to look at it […]

Exposing a SQL injection vulnerability you’ve never heard of

This article documents a SQL injection vulnerability I discovered in sys.sp_dbmmonitorupdate, a Microsoft-signed system stored procedure. For other SQL Server security vulnerabilities I’ve discovered, see the full series here.