We Are Not Alone
Today we have a guest editorial from Robert Pearl that talks about the SQL Server community, and how you can get involved.
Conditional report rendering based on render formats for SSRS Reports
When using Report Manager, users can export reports to different formats like PDF, XLS and others. When reports are exported to other formats they also include all of the content from the report, but rendered to the format of the report output. There maybe scenarios where you would not want a particular part or component of report to appear in these other report formats. A practical example of this could be that you want to display images when the report is displayed in HTML, but not when the report is exported to a PDF format. In this tip we take a look at a new feature in Reporting Services that allows us to control these items without having to create multiple report versions.
SQL Saturday #52 - Colorado
A free one day training event in the Denver Tech Center on Sept 25, 2010. Come learn about SQL Server and how to further your career at this one day event.
Social Engineering Dangers
Social engineering is one of the most effective ways to hack information out of a company. Steve Jones looks at this technique and a recent contest at DefCon that featured social engineering.
Ways to minimize sort operations
In this article Brian Ellul explorea how it's possible to eliminate the SORT operator (and its performance cost) on performing SELECTS statements.
Issuing Current Time Increments in StreamInsight (A Practical Example)
The issuing of a Current Time Increment, Cti, in StreamInsight is very definitely one of the most important concepts to learn if you want your Streams to be responsive. A full discussion of how to issue Ctis is beyond the scope of this article but a very good explanation in addition to Books Online can be found in these three articles by a member of the StreamInsight team at Microsoft, Ciprian Gerea.
SQL Saturday #49 - Orlando
A free, one day training event taking place on October 16, 2010 in Orlando, FL.
Inside the Optimizer: Constructing a Plan - Part 3
Join Paul White in part three of a four-part series exploring the internals of query optimization as he looks at the rules that are used to build the execution plan.
More Than SQL
Today Steve Jones talks about the upcoming SQL Saturday #52 in Colorado, and how it's encompassing more than just a day of SQL learning.
SQL Saturday #55 - San Diego
The first SQL Saturday in San Diego kicks off fall with a full day of free SQL Server information, lectures, and seminars from the experts on the West Coast.
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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