NoSQL Basics
Today Steve Jones talks about NOSQL and why it might be important for SQL Server DBAs to understand more about it and be able to talk about when it is appropriate to use.
Contiguous Time Periods
It is always more efficient to maintain referential integrity by using constraints rather than triggers. Sometimes it isn't obvious how to do this. Until a recent idea by Alex Kuznetsov, the history table presented problems for checking data that were difficult to solve with constraints. Joe Celko explains.
SQL Server Index Tuning for Mere Mortals
One of the most important things to measure, monitor, and “get right” for good overall SQL Server OLTP performance is...
RAID 5 and SQL Server
Given that disk storage has come down substantially in price over recent years, will RAID 5 continue to be relevant as a storage configuration for databases?
Transparent Database Encryption in SQL Server: A Planning Guide
A planning guide for the implementation of TDE in SQL Server.
TSQL Challenge 47 - Read the modification history and identify the fir
A table contains the list of modifications made to each card. Your job is to write a query that shows the first number, current number (most recent) and the number of changes made.
Natural vs. Surrogate Keys in SQL Server : Getting the Proper Perspective
This article demonstrates the relative merits of natural and surrogate keys and benchmarks their performance in different scenarios.
Profiling Database Activity in the Entity Framework
It’s important to profile your database queries to see what happens in response to Entity Framework queries and other data access activities, says Julie Lerman, who gives you the details on several profiling options to improve you coding.
Raffle SQL Server Style
This article presents a possible solution to the raffle logistics employed in SQL Server user group meetings around the world.
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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