I'm writing this while in hiding at the PASS Data Community Summit that's taking place in Seattle this week. I just had a real surprise, finding out that DocumentDB is PostgreSQL under the covers and always has been. However, as much as I enjoy talking PostgreSQL, for the moment, I'll shut up about it. Instead, […]
2025-11-22
71 reads
2025-11-19
586 reads
Artificial intelligence is everywhere: It’s in our tools, our workflows, our marketing pitches…and increasingly, in our bottom lines. But a thought-provoking article published recently on the AI bubble asks a far more sobering question: What’s it really going to cost to profit from AI? Many people will roll their eyes and say, “Isn’t that obvious? […]
2025-11-08
96 reads
Introduction Nowadays, with the widespread adoption of microservices across major companies, using Windows Server to host SQL Server remains the gold standard. However, there are still certain scenarios—or even specific environments—where deploying SQL Server in containerized setups using the Docker engine becomes necessary. In this article, I will offer practical tips based on my hands-on […]
2025-10-27
4,249 reads
2025-10-24
1,488 reads
Learn about implicit transaction and why you might not want to enable this setting.
2025-10-24
6,361 reads
Why do I love editorials, I can hear you asking. The answer is simple. It's all about opinions. I have opinions. Lots of them. Lots and lots of them. I'm flying home from Hong Kong after visiting a Redgate customer. They are doing amazing work.. It's so cool getting to see how people are solving […]
2025-10-18
59 reads
This article shows how to use Python to create a REST API for your application that developers can use to access the database.
2025-10-17
5,314 reads
This article presents a way to discover those tables that are unused over a period of time, along with suggestions on how to get rid of these tables.
2025-11-26 (first published: 2025-10-15)
14,607 reads
You have a Power BI project that generates real-time reports for an inventory management system that uses SQL Server. You are aware that Power BI performance is heavily influenced by how your data is structured in SQL Server but don’t have a clear understanding of how to optimize your SQL data structure for Power BI. In this article, we look at different ways to structure the data and tables to help improve Power BI query performance.
2025-10-13
By Steve Jones
I had an idea for an animated view of a sales tool, and started...
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...
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