Tracy Hamlin, Exceptional DBA of 2010, on what it means to go the extra mile
An interview with the Exceptional DBA of 2010, Tracy Hamlin.
When To Touch
When can you modify a database that supports some third party product? Steve Jones has a few thoughts and warns you to be careful.
Executing SSIS Packages Using DTExec
Learn how the DTExec and DTExecUI utilities give you the ability to assign values to arbitrary properties of components within a SQL Server Integration Services package, when invoking its execution.
DMVs: are they worth the effort?
Many of the SQL Server DMVs still have a wild, unfinished feel but they are an incredibly useful tool for DBA, well-worth the sweat and toil required to learn and query them effectively.
Multi-Script, Multi-DB Deployments
A way to handle application releases involving multiple scripts and/or multiple databases.
Rating Bugs
How do you triage and rate the bugs that come in for software? How should Microsoft do this for SQL Server. Steve Jones has a few comments.
Tracy Hamlin elected Exceptional DBA of 2010
Congratulations to Tracy Hamlin, voted to be the Exceptional DBA of 2010.
TSQL Challenge 37 - Calculate the downtime and duration of servers bas
This is a challenge to identify the downtime of servers from the log data generated by a monitoring application.
How to execute a DOS command when xp_cmdshell is disabled
For security reasons many sites disable the extended stored procedure xp_cmdshell, which is used to run DOS commands or executables. When you really have to run a DOS command or an executable from a stored procedure how can you get around this limitation without a breakdown in security.
Linking to the Previous Row
One common problem in querying is to reference the previous row in a data set as part of a calculation. David McKinney brings us an interesting solution using SQL Server 2005.
Blogs
Houston AI-Lytics 2026–Powerpoint Slides
By Steve Jones
Thanks to everyone for attending my session on running a Local LLM. If you...
The Book of Redgate: Do the Right Things
By Steve Jones
I do believe that Redgate has been very customer focused since it’s inception. I’ve...
GenAI vs Dashboards: Not the Same (And Never Will Be)
By James Serra
There’s a question I’ve been hearing more and more lately, especially as Copilot, Fabric,...
Forums
T-SQL in SQL Server 2025: JSON_ARRAYAGG
Comments posted to this topic are about the item T-SQL in SQL Server 2025:...
Spring Connections and Learning at PASS On Tour
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Spring Connections and Learning at...
Multiple Sequence Values
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Multiple Sequence Values
Question of the Day
Multiple Sequence Values
How do I easily get the next 12 sequence values from a sequence object?
See possible answers