Five Things to Trim From SQL Server
With a SQL-meme going through the SQL Server community this week, Steve Jones comments on the various suggestions and offers a way to get your voice heard.
Precious Ideas
Steve Jones talks about encrypting stored procedures and why it's a bad idea. And that it's a feature that should be removed from SQL Server.
The SSIS File Sweeper
Moving files around is a task that many DBAs need to accomplish. Whether as part of an import or export process, or just for administration purposes, this new article from JD Gonzalez can help you solve this problem.
Handling SQL Server Errors
This article covers the basics of TRY CATCH error handling in T-SQL introduced in SQL Server 2005. It includes the usage of common functions to return information about the error and using the TRY CATCH block in stored procedures and transactions.
TSQL Challenge 30 - A Matrix Transposition challenge in TSQL
This is a matrix transposition challenge. Your job is to change the position of the numbres in a 5x5 matrix.
Generating Insert Statements
This article from new author Oleg Netchaev describes the cursor-less script used to generate insert statements. This allows you to efficiently and easily add data generation statements to your project deployments.
More, More, More
This Friday's poll asks what changes the community might like to see at SQLServerCentral.
Business Intelligence is a Growing Field
How do you, as a database administrator, display the wealth of knowledge in your Database to the organization in a meaningful way -- Business Intelligence.
Backup SQL Server to Amazon S3 with CloudBerry Backup
In this sponsored article from Cloudberry, learn how you can backup your SQL Server data to the Amazon EC3 cloud.
Free Advice or Free Consulting
A guest editorial from Grant Fritchey today talks examines the free advice that is often given in the forums. It's not free consulting and you shouldn't expect that.
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
Backing Up a DMK
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The Quiet Part
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BIT_COUNT in SQL Server
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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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