Does the Role of the DBA Need to Evolve?
With the amount of data being stored expanding exponentially, does the role of the DBA need to change from caretaker to interpreter?
Encryption Works
Encryption is supposed to protect data, and it appears to be working as police and authorities are often stymied by encrypted disks. Steve Jones recommends you encrypt your disks on all your machines.
TSQL Challenge 71 - Play mangled words game in TSQL
Your task is to process the input table that contains several mangled words and try to 'un-mangle' them and validate them against a 'dictionary' table.
Backup Verification: Tips for Database Backup Testing
A Backup system is merely part of a recovery system. If your backups can't be used to recover the database, then they're useless. Do you regularly make sure that you can restore a database from your backups?
Vote for the DBA in Space Finalists
There are 15 finalists in the DBA in Space competition. Cast your vote today, and every day, for the next 5 days to decide who is going into space.
A brief explanation and solution for the Double Hop problem
What on earth does “Login failed for user ‘(null)’, Reason: Not associated with a trusted SQL Server conn” mean?
The Employment Contract
This Friday Steve Jones wants to know if you'd like to have an employment contract of some sort. Do you want your duties, or maybe exlcusions, explicitly spelled out in an agreement?
How to Build a Resume (that doesn’t suck)
Resumes are like opinions, which are like something else: everybody’s got one. And if you don’t have one, then certain key functions are very hard to perform. In this case, not having a resume makes the job-getting difficult.
Restoring a SQL Server Database – A Practical Example
Performing a Database Restore is a part of a DBA's daily life. A DBA may need to perform a Restore due to various reasons such as recovery, refreshing a database for testing purpose etc. Many times it can be difficult to perform a Restore due to corrupted media, low disk space on the server and so on. This articlel outlines one approach which can be used to Restore the backup of the Production Database a test environment.
Setup Alerts for PBM
PBM raises errors for policy violations. We can create alerts on those errors to be notified of policy violations. In order to setup alerts on these errors there are three prerequisites. Note that violations for the “On Demand” evaluation mode do not raise errors. A policy must be set to
Blogs
Claude AI Convinced Me Not to Build an iPad App
By Steve Jones
I coach volleyball and I do a lot of stat stuff on paper. I...
A New Word: Dolorblindness
By Steve Jones
dolorblindness – n. the frustration that you’ll never be able to understand another person’s...
Claude Code Helps Analyze Test Data Manager Log Files
By Steve Jones
I had a customer ask about analyzing their Test Data Manager (TDM) usage to...
Forums
Data Warehouse Toolkit meets Star Schema: The Complete Reference
Is there a good syllabus for reading these two together? (Yes, it's called the...
GPX distance and time analysis in SQL Server
Comments posted to this topic are about the item GPX distance and time analysis...
The DBA is Dead; Long Live the DBA
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The DBA is Dead; Long...
Question of the Day
Changing the AG Listener
In SQL Server 2025, if I want to remove an IP from a listener, what do I do?
See possible answers