Are IT Certifications Still Relevant?
Steve talks about certifications today, after watching a video that showcases the benefits of why they are good for your career.
Stairway to SQL Server Security Level 7: Security Across Databases with Cross-Database Ownership Chaining
Sometimes you need to reach outside a database and access data and objects from multiple databases, which raises some security issues and increases the complexity of data access. In this stairway level, you’ll learn about cross-database ownership chaining so that you can reach across database boundaries securely.
SQL Server Filtered Index Essentials Guide
Learn about using filtered indexes for SQL Server tables and some of the potential issues you might be faced with when using a filtered index.
Ingest and Retrieve data from an ADX Cluster Using Python
Learn how to query data in Azure Data Explorer using Python.
The DBAccountant
Are DBAs going to be responsible for financial accounting for cloud resources as a part of their job? Steve has a few thoughts today.
Snake draft sorting in SQL Server, part 2
In my previous post, I showed how to borrow a snake draft concept from fantasy football, or a packing technique from the shipping industry, to distribute different portions of a workload to run in parallel.
Take Care
The world seems to be proceeding through some stuff at the moment. IT and our industry as a whole, equally seems to be going through some stuff. As such, allow this oldster to offer some advice: Take care of yourself. I know, I'm the same, you may have responsibilities for others. You need to take […]
Database Dashboards in Azure Data Studio
Azure Data Studio (ADS) is a lightweight IDE built on Visual Studio Code. I've written a few articles on how the tool works, and this one continues the series. In this article, I want to look at the database dashboards and how you can customize them. The other articles in this series on ADS works […]
The On-Call Load
Today Steve asks about on-call responsibility for you and how you view this as part of your job, or in your job search.
Managing Failed Pipeline Runs in Azure Data Factory
In this article, we look at how to setup different ways to handle pipeline failures and notifications when working with Azure and Azure Data Factory.
Blogs
A bespoke reporting solution doesn’t have to cost the earth
By ChrisJenkins
You could be tolerating limited reporting because there isn’t an off the shelf solution...
Presenting with Visual Studio Code
A while back I wrote a quick post on setting up key mappings in...
Advice I Like: In 100 Years
By Steve Jones
In 100 years a lot of what we take to be true now will...
Forums
AllocationType as ROW_OVERFLOW_DATA
Hello, I inherited a number of tables with like 20-30 column using nvarchar(256) in...
is it true we cant debug c# scripts in ssis anymore under vs
Hi, i'm running vs2022. I'm trying out a c# script that i'd like to...
Question of the Day
Missing the Jaro Winkler Distance
I upgraded a SQL Server 2019 instance to SQL Server 2025. I wanted to test the fuzzy string search functions. I run this code:
SELECT JARO_WINKLER_DISTANCE('tim', 'tom')
I get this error message:Msg 195, Level 15, State 10, Line 1 'JARO_WINKLER_DISTANCE' is not a recognized built-in function name.What is wrong? See possible answers