The Improvement Limit
How much of a difference can you make at a job? Steve has a few thoughts today.
2025-10-13
106 reads
Editorials
Technological Dinosaurs or Social Dinosaurs?
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
168 reads
Start Fixing Your DB with Better Code
The best way to improve your database performance is with better code. We all know that, but few of us actually end up making those changes.
2025-10-10 (first published: 2017-11-16)
592 reads
Is Rolling Back The Same as Failing?
When you must rollback a deployment of changes, is that a failure of the process? The development effort? Or something else?
2025-10-08 (first published: 2014-03-04)
301 reads
Getting Fired
When should a DBA get fired? Steve Jones thinks it should be rare and gives you two cases.
2025-10-06 (first published: 2014-03-27)
700 reads
Lessons from the Postmark-MCP Backdoor
The Koi Security team recently uncovered the first known, malicious MCP server in the wild: a package called postmark-mcp, downloaded over 1,500 times per week, that silently BCCs every outgoing email to an attacker-controlled domain. So, what happened? High-level, a lot: The attacker cloned the legitimate Postmark MCP repository, made one small but nefarious change […]
2025-10-04
172 reads
2025-10-03
91 reads
PRs Are Like Trouble Tickets
Adopting a modern development approach brings with it the need to manage PRs, which Steve thinks can be like trouble tickets.
2025-10-01
114 reads
2025-09-29
169 reads
Building AI Governance and Policies- First Steps
AI has moved from experimental to operational in record time for many organizations. In industries like fintech, healthcare, and retail where sensitive PII (personally identifiable information) and relational databases are the backbone of daily operations, this innovation speed to adopt AI brings enormous opportunity, but also significant risks
2025-09-27
81 reads
Blogs
Learn Better: Pause to Review More
By Brian Kelley
If you want to learn better, pause more in your learning to intentionally review.
Azure SQL Managed Instance Next-Gen: Bring on the IOPS
By John
If you’ve used Azure SQL Managed Instance General Purpose, you know the drill: to...
SQL, MDX, DAX – the languages of data
By DataOnWheels
Ramblings of a retired data architect Let me start by saying that I have...
Forums
Two foreign keys to the same table. Can't cascade deletes.
Not sure if this is really a relational theory question but it seems about...
Connecting Power BI to SSAS and effective user not working
Hi everyone, Below is a consolidated summary of what we validated Architecture & data...
High Availability setup - has anyone seen this method?
Hi all, I recently moved to a new employer who have their HA setup...
Question of the Day
Encoding URLs
I have this data in a SQL Server 2025 table:
CREATE TABLE Response ( ResponseID INT NOT NULL CONSTRAINT ResponsePK PRIMARY KEY , ResponseVal VARBINARY(5000) ) GOIf I want to get a value from this table that I can add to a URL in a browser, which of these code items produces a result I can use? See possible answers