You're going to have to bear with me on this one because my thoughts aren't fully formed. As I'm sure I've mentioned, I'm a little elderly (and you thought I was going to talk about radios). As such, I've seen the death of a few technologies. I may not have shared this widely, but my […]
2025-10-11
173 reads
In this level of the Stairway to Azure SQL Hyperscale we learn about the read-only layer that speeds up queries.
2025-10-08
410 reads
2025-10-03
92 reads
Discover how SQL Server features reduce web app latency. Learn key tactics to deliver faster queries and better performance in today’s web economy.
2025-09-29
2,416 reads
Many of you reading this likely have an Availability Group (AG) set up on at least one database in your organization. Maybe not most, but many of you as this has proven to be a technology that many people like for HA/DR, upgrades, and probably other uses. As the technology has evolved from it's SQL […]
2025-09-17
125 reads
I recently had the opportunity to talk a little PostgreSQL with the Salt Lake City PostgreSQL Meetup group (thank you for having me by the way). Great bunch of people who were really engaged and asked a lot of questions. On the way out of the event, I was chatting with one person (who had […]
2025-09-13
206 reads
Steve has a few thoughts on the lack of data sovereignty in the cloud, with an outlook that isn't very positive.
2025-08-29
100 reads
2025-08-25
368 reads
Today Steve is asking if any of you use Standard Edition with the coming of a developer edition that matches it.
2025-08-15
115 reads
Introduction ChatGPT includes custom GPTs. You can create your own custom GPT. In this article, we will demonstrate how to create a custom GPT expert in SQL Server. Requirements To create your own GPT, you need to use the paid version of ChatGPT. First, go to ChatGPT. Secondly, if you don’t have the paid version, […]
2025-09-02 (first published: 2025-08-11)
4,689 reads
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