Your Security Checkup
We often find security issues come from holes in the way we've set up systems. Steve asks if you perform security checkups on your systems.
2025-12-08
42 reads
Editorials
How Important Are Real Time Decisions?
There has been a push to build real time analytics and decision support systems. Steve discusses whether this is a good idea for many organizations.
2025-12-05
86 reads
SQL Server Licensing is Simple
Over the years I've had no shortage of licensing questions for SQL Server. At times it's felt a little crazy. Look at the licensing guide. Choose EE or SE and the number of cores. Then check if you're using VMs. Oh, and consider the cloud, and which cloud you're running a workload on. It's simple […]
2025-12-03
154 reads
Don't Let Corner Cases Drive Your Design
When we design a database or system, we often do so with corner cases in mind. We don't have to do this.
2025-12-01
95 reads
FinOps - the new name for performance tuning
This year I have been speaking with an increasing number of people about FinOps and what it means. Fundamentally, it is all about getting a handle on the cost for our technology spend. When we step back and look at the bigger picture it also has ramifications on corporate Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) programs […]
2025-11-29
105 reads
2025-11-28
53 reads
Done is Better than Good
Getting something done is important, but so is the quality level. Steve has a few thoughts today.
2025-11-26
81 reads
Growing Artificial Intelligence
This week Steve Jones discusses artificial intelligence and one of the building blocks that will be needed: data.
2025-11-25 (first published: 2016-07-04)
97 reads
The DBA's Twelve Days of Christmas
On the first day of Christmas my new DBA sent to me A table with a primary key On the second day of Christmas my new DBA sent to me Two Foreign Keys, and A table with a primary key On the third day of Christmas my new DBA sent to me Three stored procs […]
2025-11-25 (first published: 2019-12-24)
265 reads
The Tally Table
The tally table is a valuable tool for a SQL Server developer, but how many of you understand how to create and use one?
2025-11-25 (first published: 2015-08-13)
699 reads
Blogs
When the Internet Stumbles: Lessons from Cloudflare & Azure Front Door Outages
By John
Recently, the world was reminded of just how fragile the internet can be. Two...
Prepping for Certification, Part 4 of 4
By Brian Kelley
In Parts 1-3, I covered how I prepare for a certification exam. In this...
Flyway Tips: Automation Assistance in Flyway Desktop
By Steve Jones
I was chatting with the product managers at Flyway and one asked me whether...
Forums
CAST datetimeoffset(7) as a datetime in UK format
I have a view where I am casting a datetimeoffset(7) field to smalldatetime or...
what are the downsides of TDE not running vs running?
hi for the 2 years i've been here I believe we've had "encryption" turned...
Help! MEMORY_ALLOCATION_EXT wait stalls
Hi I have an overnight process that moves allot of claims records Been working...
Question of the Day
Putting the Player with the Number
In SQL Server 2025, what does this return?
DECLARE @player varchar(20) = 'Bo Nix', @num VARCHAR = '10' SELECT @player || @numSee possible answers