Patching Challenges
Having a patching strategy for your systems is important, and Steve notes that you ought to be organized and allow for some flexibility when designing one.
2021-06-30
345 reads
Editorials
Where Does NoSQL work well?
NoSQL was hyped as the way to replace your RDBMS and achieve incredible performance at scale. It does work well, but it hasn't replaced most RDBMSes. Steve has a few thoughts on this topic.
2021-06-28
242 reads
What Counts For a DBA: Ego
Leaving aside, for a second, Freud’s psychoanalytical definitions, the term “ego” generally refers to a person’s sense of self, and their self-esteem. In casual usage, however, it usually appears in the adjectival form, “egotistical” (most often followed by “jerk”). You don’t need to be a jerk to be a DBA; humility is important. However, ego is important […]
2021-06-26
290 reads
Your Permanent Record
Today we have a guest editorial from Tim Mitchell. Tim talks about the impact of your posts online against the impression you make, or want to make, with potential employers.
2021-06-25 (first published: 2012-04-19)
302 reads
Work/Training Balance - The hidden balancing act
Should we be considering our Work/Training Balance as part of our careers?
2021-06-23 (first published: 2016-12-05)
235 reads
Lots of Data and AI Helping Firefighters
Using AI/ML to help process large amounts of data allows us to tackle problems that we might not otherwise be able to work on.
2021-06-21
163 reads
Deceptive Visualizations
I'm sure there are plenty of examples, but I've seen deceptive data visualizations far too often in mass media. I don't often watch the news, but at times I've been at the gym, saw a graph on a television, and been a little surprised. The issue that bothered me is similar to what's discussed in […]
2021-06-19
132 reads
Evaluting a DBA
Steve has a few thoughts on hiring and the way in which you might want to evaluate a DBA candidate.
2021-06-18
346 reads
Tracking, Privacy, and Lots of Data
Apple has implemented some privacy controls for customers, which some advertisers don't like, but Steve agrees with.
2021-06-16
132 reads
Useless Hackathons
Are hackathons a good way to get a project started? It's not clear to Steve that open ended events are good.
2021-06-14
176 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