Maaaaaagic Tables!!!
I had an interview earlier this week. An interview for a SQL developer position. It went fine. But. Question number X...
SQL Server Index Maintenance Performance Tuning for Large Tables
This article describes a real-world example of performance tuning index maintenance for a large table of approximately 1 billion rows.
Modifying and deleting extended properties
Continuing the short series on extended properties, this article explains how to turbocharge the creation of extended properties
Tell Me What I Need To Know
Today we have a guest editorial from Andy Warren that talks about the problems we sometimes run into when we must work with other people and make decisions. Sometimes getting the information from people, or giving it to them, is not as simple as we would like.
Supporting Large Scale Team Development
With a large-scale development of a database application, the task of supporting a large number of development and test databases, keeping them up to date with different builds can soon become ridiculously complex and costly. Grant Fritchey demonstrates a novel solution that can reduce the storage requirements enormously, and allow individual developers to work on thir own version, using a full set of data.
The Mystery Of The Slow Last Row
Things Go South
Recently I was troubleshooting a piece of software that archives data out of a very active import table....
Changing Text in Multiple Stored Procedures From a Stored Procedure
In this article Brian Davey present a solution for changing the text in multiple stored procedures using T-SQL.
How to Deal with the Stresses and Anxieties in Today's IT Industry
Today we have a guest editorial from Stanley Popovich that talks about dealing with stress at work.
Patch Week
With SQL Server releasing new cumulative updates this week, Steve Jones talks about the patching strategy of SQL Server.
Blogs
Narrow Task Decomposition in AI Pipeline Agents
A nightly load into sales_fact fails. Ask an orchestrating agent to break down the...
Car Update: August 2026
By Steve Jones
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 James Serra
An architecture scenario Imagine separate Sales, Finance, Shared Data, and Executive Analytics workspaces. Sales...
Forums
Managing Incidents and Fighting Fires
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Backing Up a DMK
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The Quiet Part
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Question of the Day
Backing Up a DMK
In SQL Server 2025, I have a database with a Database Masker Key (DMK). I want to back up this key and keep a copy offline. When do I have to open this key before running the backup?
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