Powershell to Automate SQL Compare
A question came up on the SQL Server Central Forums, how could you use Red Gate SQL Compare to automate...
What's a Passive Server?
Today Steve Jones talks about licensing and the complexity if brings in various scenarios. Do your passive servers have to be licensed? What is the definition of "passive"?
7 Things that High Availability is Not
Wesley has heard High Availablity touted as all sorts of technological cure-all for busy SysAdmins and DBAs, and now he's taking a stand against it. There are a range of things that High Availability is regularly confused with (either deliberately or innocently), and Wesley's clearing it all up
A Great Deal of Hot Air
Even though neither the science nor politics of climate change is fully established yet, the legislators and bureaucrats have smelt an opportunity to further tighten their grip on IT. A sign of things to come is the EU’s Code of Conduct for Data Centers on Energy Efficiency.
It's Almost Always the Humans
Today we have a reprint of an editorial from Sept 19, 2005 as Steve Jones is on vacation. In this one, Steve Jones reminds companies that saving money sometimes on Customer Service isn't as easy as you think.
Which of Your Stored Procedures are Using the Most Resources?
Dynamic Management Views and Functions aren't always easy to understand. However, they are the easiest way of finding out which of your stored procedures are using up the most resources. Greg takes the time to explain how and why these DMVs and DMFs get their information. Suddenly, it all gets clearer.
How To Get Table Row Counts Quickly And Painlessly
Use sysindexes\DMVs insead of select count(*) to retreive table row counts
31 Days of SSIS – Generating Row Numbers (23/31)
31 Days of SSIS
It’s Sunday afternoon and a good time to be putting up post twenty-three for the 31 Days...
Internals and Performance class in Dallas
At last, my blog is starting to pay real dividends. Not only do I get the opportunity to publish my...
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
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?
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