Better Bosses Needed
These days it seems there's no shortage of bad managers out there. However the bad ones do more than hurt morale, they actually can impact productivity. Steve Jones wonders why companies don't do more to fix this.
Don't Share Passwords Across Sites
There is a rippling effect from the hack on Yahoo. Those users and passwords are being used on other sites. Steve Jones reminds us that we shouldn't be sharing passwords, and we should educate our users to do the same thing.
Track source dates when loading a data warehouse
A primer on how to reduce network and source system load when reading a relational source into the data warehouse.
An Introduction to SQL Server Service Broker
Service Broker is a technology built into SQL Server and utilized by the engine for its internal asynchronous processing. The great thing about Service Broker is that its functionality is exposed so we can build our own custom data integrations. Deanna Dicken introduces you to the concepts needed to create a service broker integration.
Performance Data
Great DBAs collect all kinds of metrics on their instances and let them manage themselves. However many administrators need help monitoring and interpreting the data. Today Steve Jones asks if you think this data needs extra security or is it less of an issue than other PII data.
Summarizing Imported Data
This article shows a few simple techniques to summarize table data using T-SQL.
Data Generator Source Adapter
This component needs little explanation. It generates random integer (DT_I4) and string (DT_WSTR) data and places them in the pipeline. You specify how many columns of each you would like and for any string columns you pass a fixed length value. You then need to specify how many rows in total you require to be generated. This component is used by us to do testing of the pipeline and components downstream.
Leaving Some Headroom
Dropbox has grown tremendously in the last few years and Steve Jones talks about a concept of running with less headroom as a way to cope with that rapid growth. Is it something you'd be interested in with a SQL Server?
Using SMO 2012 to trouble shoot support issues
SMO can be a valuable tool for working with SQL Server when you don't have access to all the tools that come with the platform. In this article, SMO helps solve an issue with a SQL Server.
NULL-Friendly: Using Sparse Columns and Column Sets in SQL Server
Sparse columns and column sets in SQL Server 2012 provide a way of accomodating the less-structured data that has always proved to be tricky for the relational model. They can be used very effectively where the attributes are sparse for any given entity and very numerous across all entities. Seth Delconte shows how to use them.
Blogs
Runing tSQLt Tests with Claude
By Ed Elliott
Running tSQLt unit tests is great from Visual Studio but my development workflow...
Getting Your Data GenAI-Ready: The Next Stage of Data Maturity
By James Serra
I remember a meeting where a client’s CEO leaned in and asked me, “So,...
Learn Better: Pause to Review More
By Brian Kelley
If you want to learn better, pause more in your learning to intentionally review.
Forums
The Long Name
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T-SQL in SQL Server 2025: Fuzzy String Search I
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Question of the Day
The Long Name
I run this code to create a table:
When I check the length, I get these results:
A table name is limited to 128 characters. How does this work?