Keeping Your Job
A few thoughts from Steve Jones on how you can help increase your own job security in IT.
Routine Dependency Visualizer
This article contains a T-SQL script that can show you the dependency of all objects in your SQL Server database.
SQL Server 2012 Integration Services - Unattended Execution of SSIS Packages
Quite often, tasks accomplished via SSIS are a part of procedures that run unattended, either scheduled to launch at a particular date and time or triggered by some arbitrarily chosen event. Marcin Policht shares a typical approach to implementing such a scenario.
A Tale of Broken BI
Graphs and charts are dangerous in the wrong hands, and if built on data that is carelessly gathered will mislead as often as they lead. Phil Factor speaks from hard experience.
Stairway to XML: Level 7 - Updating Data in an XML Instance
You need to provide the necessary keywords and define the XQuery and value expressions in your XML DML expression in order to use the modify() method to update element and attribute values in either typed or untyped XML instances in an XML column. Robert Sheldon explains how.
The PoSh DBA: Solutions using PowerShell and SQL Server
PowerShell is worth using when it is the quickest way to providing a solution. For the DBA, it is much more than getting information from SQL Server instances via PowerShell; it can also be run from SQL Server as part of a system that helps with administrative and monitoring tasks.
Understanding Column Properties for a SQL Server Table
Designing a table can be a little complicated if you don’t have the correct knowledge of data types, relationships, and even column properties. In this tip, Brady Upton goes over the column properties and provides examples.
Two Steps Ahead
Today Steve Jones talks about those great DBAs, the Exceptional ones that do more than just respond to issues or set up monitoring on their systems.
Getting Started With XML Indexes
XML Indexes make a huge difference to the speed of XML queries, as Seth Delconte explains; and demonstrates by running queries against half a million XML employee records. The execution time of a query is reduced from two seconds to being too quick to measure, purely by creating the right type of secondary index for the query.
Blogs
Questions and Answers from Running a Local LLM
By Steve Jones
I had a few random questions from my Running a Local LLM on Your...
Overview of Claude AI Models: Which One to Choose?
By Arun Sirpal
For those entering the AI space whether professionally or personally I wanted to give...
Houston AI-Lytics 2026–Powerpoint Slides
By Steve Jones
Thanks to everyone for attending my session on running a Local LLM. If you...
Forums
SSIS package failing intermittently on last Excel Component
Good Afternoon, I have a Job which "fires" off an SSIS package (that is...
T-SQL in SQL Server 2025: JSON_ARRAYAGG
Comments posted to this topic are about the item T-SQL in SQL Server 2025:...
Spring Connections and Learning at PASS On Tour
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Spring Connections and Learning at...
Question of the Day
Multiple Sequence Values
How do I easily get the next 12 sequence values from a sequence object?
See possible answers