External Article

Identifying PII Data to Lock Down in SQL Server - Part 1

We're pretty confident that we have locked down and encrypted our financial data, but a lot of our customer's PII (Personally Identifiable Information) data is still held in unencrypted form. This data is able to be selected directly by read only business users on many of our downstream reporting, datawarehouse and standby servers. The rise of identity theft makes protecting this data imperative. DBAs are the custodians of this information and must protect it like we protect our own personal information. Recent publicity over the theft of Sony PSN data underscores both the economic and ethical importance of protecting personal data.

External Article

Questions About SQL Server Distribution Statistics

Fabiano Amorim was asked a couple of questions about SQL Server Distribution Statistics. Having given an answer based on his current knowledge, he then decided to find out for himself whether what he'd said was right, and started an epic journey of exploration into Distribution Statistics and the way that the Query Optimiser uses them.

SQLServerCentral Editorial

Bad Eyes

This editorial was originally published on Jan 9, 2006. Steve is traveling to the UK this week and we are reprinting a few older editorials. This editorial talks about the health of your eyes, a topic of concern for those of us that work with computers regularly.

External Article

Questions About SQL Server Distribution Statistics

Fabiano Amorim was asked a couple of questions about SQL Server Distribution Statistics. Having given an answer based on his current knowledge, he then decided to find out for himself whether what he'd said was right, and started an epic journey of exploration into Distribution Statistics and the way that the Query Optimiser uses them.

Blogs

Narrow Task Decomposition in AI Pipeline Agents

By

A nightly load into sales_fact fails. Ask an orchestrating agent to break down the...

Car Update: August 2026

By

It’s been some time since I provided a car update, so I decided to...

Microsoft Fabric OneLake Shortcuts: When to Use Them and When Not To

By

An architecture scenario Imagine separate Sales, Finance, Shared Data, and Executive Analytics workspaces. Sales...

Read the latest Blogs

Forums

Searching for my own posts

By pietlinden

I have a really stupid question... Is there an easy way to search for...

How to Work with On-Premises AI Models to Generate T-SQL Code

By Daniel Calbimonte

Comments posted to this topic are about the item How to Work with On-Premises...

Escaping Strings

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Escaping Strings

Visit the forum

Question of the Day

Escaping Strings

The STRING_ESCAPE() function requires 2 parameters in SQL Server 2025. The first is a string of text and the second is the type of escape rules being used. What are the options for the second parameter?

See possible answers