Do You Have ALL the YAML?
There are lots of data exchange formats, and one of them that has become popular is YAML. However, are you sure you have the entire file?
2021-07-26
1,409 reads
Editorials
Define All The Steps Up Front
After 23 years in one place, I'm pulling up stakes and moving. We're selling our house in one state in the US and we're buying a house in another state about half a continent away. To say it's a stressful and exhausting process is an understatement. The worst part is that no one has defined […]
2021-07-24
208 reads
How Often Do You Patch?
Patching is a chore that any system administrator needs to deal with. As SQL Server 2016 moves out of mainstream support, Steve asks if you have a plan and how often you ensure systems are patched.
2021-07-23
275 reads
The Danger of Management Access
First we had the Solarwinds hack, and now we have a Kaseya ransomware epidemic. It seems the criminals are moving up the stack. We used to see physical attacks on tapes and keyboards, then we saw OS level attacks. Now we seem to be getting to the management layer for software that is used to […]
2021-07-21
304 reads
Seriously Real Time Data Processing
Autonomous cars provide a great environment for large scale, real-time data processing.
2021-07-19
422 reads
Taking time off
Time is a precious commodity, and so much of our time is dedicated to working. IT professionals often have jobs with good benefits, including generous paid time off. It’s important to get away from work to relax and recharge, but, sometimes, it’s difficult to take those days that belong to us. Even when we do […]
2021-07-17
108 reads
Messy Job Descriptions
Job descriptions can be messy and intimidating, but Steve notes that they aren't ever going to be perfect. Work with that to find the job or candidate you need.
2021-07-16
272 reads
Improving DevOps Automation
Steve notes that his employer is re-evaluating their build and release process, in a true DevOps fashion to improve the way they build software.
2021-07-14
138 reads
Enterprise Software
Building software in an enterprise is hard, and often, large organizations don't quite know how to do it.
2021-07-12
481 reads
Do We Need to Learn Linux?
An announcement on Windows containers has Steve noting that Linux might be a more desired skill in the future for SQL Server professionals.
2021-07-10
205 reads
Blogs
When Your Microsoft Fabric Capacity Runs Out: Optimize, Scale Up, Scale Out, or Isolate?
By James Serra
Microsoft Fabric makes it wonderfully easy to put many analytics workloads on one platform....
Accessing the Data API Builder MCP Server from VS Code
By Steve Jones
I recently started playing with the MCP Server for SQL Server, which is a...
From DBA or Data Engineer to AI Engineer: A Realistic Path
If you spend your days tuning queries, managing pipelines, or keeping a production database...
Forums
Two queries work until compared with EXCEPT statement
I've got multiple databases on 2 SQL 2019 CU32 servers , all using the...
STRING_AGG DISTINCT
Has anyone written a wrapper function (or similar) around STRING_AGG() to allow the retrieval...
In-place OS upgrade or migration to new OS?
Putting this here as we're currently on SQL Server 2019 installed on Windows Server...
Question of the Day
BIT_COUNT() V
What does this return on SQL Server 2025?
select bit_count(null)See possible answers