The Last SQL Server Service Pack
SQL Server 2016 SP3, the last service pack ever is out. Steve comments on how the world of software patches has changed.
2021-10-08
546 reads
Editorials
Choosing State Over Migrations
Steve notes that there are differences between state based development and migration based development, but neither is necessarily better.
2021-10-06
419 reads
Location Data Is Not Anonymous
The world of public data is scary for Steve, even when the data is aggregated. It appears that keeping information private is becoming harder, and perhaps, impossible.
2021-10-04
158 reads
What Do You Want to Know Before Negotiating Salary?
It's almost time for Brent Ozar's annual salary survey. Steve reminds you that you can influence the questions, but more importantly, take the survey and provide data for all of us.
2021-10-02
321 reads
Do You Have a Talent Gap?
Many organizations are struggling to hire staff these days. In addition, it seems that many technology groups feel they can't find staff with the right skills.
2021-10-01
287 reads
Incident Review
After an outage, how do you respond to the issue in the future? A good review of the incident should be a learning opportunity.
2021-09-29
148 reads
Making Software Decisions
The process of building software for others involves lots of decisions. Ensuring that you are making good decisions can impact how others view your final product.
2021-09-27
192 reads
Volunteer For Something
I spent a chunk of the day yesterday, after work, but before working on a new book (yeah, I've got two jobs now), playing with my radios. I was programming the digital one to get it to use my Raspberry Pi as a hotspot (it used to work, now it doesn't). I also spent some […]
2021-09-25
227 reads
Thank a Mentor
There is almost always someone that helps us in our career with mentorship. Today Steve suggests you thank them.
2021-09-24
79 reads
To Inifinity and Beyond With 1=1
There is some code that might work, but could lead others astray in the future. Today Steve notes that we ought to write code that sets a good example, and a loop that potentially runs forever isn't that type of code.
2021-09-22
293 reads
Blogs
Advice I Like: Respect
By Steve Jones
“Don’t aim to have others like you; aim to have them respect you.” –...
Blue Sky Programming – The Optimism Trap
Many years ago, before I joined Oracle, I was working on a major modernisation...
Setting Up a Mac for Data Engineering and AI Work
If you work with data pipelines, SQL, notebooks, or machine learning models, a Mac...
Forums
SQL Art, Part 4: Happy 4th of July — A British DBA's Guide to Celebrating a War We Don't Talk About
Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Art, Part 4: Happy...
locking down agent for new user on our dev machine
hi , a new user wants to be able to add sql agent jobs...
SQL Server Enum Implementation: A Single-Row View Strategy for Avoiding Magic Values
Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Server Enum Implementation: A...
Question of the Day
BIT_COUNT I
In SQL Server 2025, I have a table (dbo.UserPermission) that contains this data:
UserID UserPermissions 15 23 37What is returned when I run this code:
select bit_count(UserPermissions) as PermissionCount from dbo.UserPermission where UserID = 3;See possible answers