Code Reviews Must Be Brutally Honest
Today we have a guest editorial from Hakim Ali. Today Akim talks about why holding back out of politeness in code reviews may be a self-defeating practice.
Pushing SQL Alerts to Remote Server using PowerShell 2 and T-SQL
Managing log files in a large enterprise environment can be an overwhelming task. In this article I will show you how to automate some of the work using SQL Alerts and Powershell 2.0
Windows Server 2012, ReFS and No SQL Server
ReFS, the new file system with Windows Server 2012, should be good news, but its apparent lack of support for SQL Server is a serious concerned for Phil Factor.
How to Audit Login Changes on a SQL Server
I've been charged with coming up with a quick solution to audit login changes on my SQL Servers. However, there's no budget so I'm going to have to come up with basic scripts and the like to do the work. Is this tip we cover a solution for you to audit login changes.
Targeted Index Performance Improvements
This article identifies which indexes are used when T-SQL code runs, and proposes ways of improving these targeted indexes, leading to better performing code.
RegexClean Transformation
Use the power of regular expressions to cleanse your data right there inside the Data Flow. This transformation includes a full user interface for simple configuration, as well as advanced features such as error output configuration. Two regular expressions are used, a match expression and a replace expression. The transformation is designed around the named capture groups or match groups, and even supports multiple expressions.
No Limits
There are some very interesting projects being performed with cloud services. Steve Jones talks about a few and the new computing without limits claim from Google.
Issues Determining an Individual SQL Server User's Permissions
Recently I was supporting a third party application. It queries to determine what tables it has permissions to before it proceeds with the rest of its functionality. We had implemented permissions based on the best practice of creating roles, assigning the permissions to the roles, and then making the users members of the roles. The application was querying INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLE_PRIVILEGES and of course didn't find any permissions directly against the user in question. We ended up granting explicit permissions to the user so the application would work, but I'm more interested in the general case. How can I determine permissions for an individual user?
Out of the Frying Pan Into the Fire
Today Steve Jones talks about the accidental DBA and how they can find themselves in a position where they are responsible, but not well trained. In those cases, it's up to the individual to learn, but also the manager to ensure it gets done.
PowerShell SMO: Just Writing Things Once
Sometimes, you can tire of writing the same PowerShell code once again. After this happened to Phil whilst keying in an SMO pipeline to access databases, it occurred to him that he should have only one pipeline to access databases in PowerShell, one reusable pipeline
Blogs
A New Word: los vidados
By Steve Jones
los vidados – n. the half-remembered acquaintances you knew years ago, who you might...
In-Person CISA Training – April 13-16, 2026
By Brian Kelley
I will be leading an in-person Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) exam prep class...
EightKB 2026
EightKB is back again for 2026! The biggest online SQL Server internals conference is...
Forums
query to track time spent on individual tasks in SSIS
Hi everyone I am looking at building a query to determine how much time...
SQL Server Transactional Replication from Always On Availability Groups to Azure SQL Database
Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Server Transactional Replication from...
Hidden Heroes
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Hidden Heroes
Question of the Day
Identities and Sequences I
When thinking of the Identity property for auto incrementing columns and sequences for the same action, which are explicitly linked to increment a number in a table when a new row is added?
See possible answers