Test Before Deciding
How do you decide what improvements to make to your SQL Server? Or what settings to turn off? Having hard and fast rules isn't a great idea, and Steve Jones talks about why.
TSQL Challenge 52: Recursive Wage Calculation in a Parent-Child dimens
This challenge is intended to calculate company's wage spent below a top level manager.
ANSI Connection Settings
It’s reasonably well known that you can get different execution plans if you change the ANSI connection settings. But the...
SQL Server Service Broker - External Activation
SQL Server Service Broker allows for two types of messaging activation, Internal Activation or External Activation. In this article we discuss External Activation.
Looking at SOX
This Friday Steve Jones asks what impact the Sarbanes-Oxley act has had on your job. After nearly a decade since the act was passed, is it intrusive in the workplace or just another part of your job.
Mouse Clicks, Reactive Extensions and StreamInsight Mashup
I had an hour spare this afternoon so I wanted to have another play with Reactive Extensions in .Net and StreamInsight. I also didn’t want to simply use a console window as a way of gathering events so I decided to use a windows form instead. The task I set myself was this. Whenever I click on my form I want to subscribe to the event and output its location to the console window and also the timestamp of the event.
SQLskills Immersion Events - Deep SQL Server Training!
SQLskills is offering a number of intense SQL Server training events later this year. A new class has been added in Chicago in May along with a London event in June.
Stored Procedure Definitions and Permissions
I wrote a post a while back that showed how you can grant execute permission ‘carte blanche’ for a database...
What a week for our first Immersion Event on Internals and Performance
A short writeup on the first Immersion Event from SQLskills, a week long class designed to bring real world skills to DBAs and developers that want to become highly skilled SQL Server professionals.
Implicit and Explicit Conversions
Code that depends on implicit conversions can live for years in production without issue. However Steve Jones says that you shouldn't depend on these conversions
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
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Managing Incidents and Fighting Fires
Backing Up a DMK
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Backing Up a DMK
The Quiet Part
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Quiet Part
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?
See possible answers