Be Prepared

I've been reading about the fires in Maui and the horrible loss of life there. My heart goes out to all involved. I hope, if you can, you donate to a good charity to help those poor people. It also inspired me to do another check on our emergency supplies and equipment. No, we don't […]

A LEFT OUTER JOIN in SQL: What Is It?

Learn about the basics of left outer joins in this article.

Managing Test Data for Database Development

In coming up with a strategy for managing test data, first you need to understand what the many test requirements are likely to be for the particular database you are developing. Next, you need to create all the different categories of test data required to suite test requirements and, finally, work out how to manage it in a way that allows a test-driven approach to development.

Read more in this latest article from Phil Factor

Looking Back and Forward

I took part in a podcast this week, Arrested DevOps. I did one with them once before, almost ten years ago. The host and I were both a little surprised that it had been so long. This caused us to look back a bit. Interestingly enough, ten years ago meant I was only about two […]

The Hidden Impact of Microsoft Defender for Azure SQL

A problem with the configuration of Microsoft Defender caused all activity on the server to get delayed.

Let Your Data Do the Talking with PowerPoint Plus Power BI

What is this about This article will be about Power BI and PowerPoint collaborating. Both tools are well-known to anyone, particularly to those who are presenting data, charts and visualizations. Without a doubt, these are powerful tools for communicating and visually transmitting information. We can use them to hand over complex information in a simple, […]

The Data Professional Social Graph

Two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to hear a keynote by Vik Fearing at Swiss PGDay 2023. He talked about Property Graphs and the Graph Query Language (not to be confused with GraphQL), a recent addition to the SQL:2023 standard. The discussion was mostly theoretical in nature because only Oracle has a current implementation […]

Keep Sharing

I was given a little reward the other day. My son came home telling me that the manufacturing company he works for wants to build some custom test equipment using Arduino-style controller chips. I've been experimenting, pretty darned lightly so far, with these over the last year. He starts asking me about which controllers I […]

How to Find the SQL Server Version

This article shows a number of ways in which you can find out the version of your instance.

Building a Kimball Data Warehouse

Learn about the Kimball method for data warehouses and how you can get started building one.