Tips for Simplifying Crosstab Query Statements
Rob Gravelle takes a complex SQL statement and shows you several ways to re-write it that both simplifies and shortens it, while still yielding the same results.
TSQL Challenge 24 - Find discrepancies in the scheduled activities and actual activities performed by employees
This is a problem that I had seen in one of the forums many years back. This problem is related to a reporting requirement from the data stored by a 'poorly designed' system.
Finding the Correct Weekday Regardless of DateFirst
In this article, learn how to get the correct weekday regardless of the DateFirst setting on your server.
When Do You Deploy?
Finding downtime can be hard at times, but Steve Jones recently found a company that took it during the week. This Friday's poll asks when you can have downtime.
Why Use SSAS?
After a great presentation from Brian Knight at the NYC User Group, Robert Pearl summarizes some information about SSAS and when it makes sense to use this subsystem. And why you might want to attend that next user group meeting.
Code that Writes Code - A Good Idea or Not?
I’m a big fan of code that writes code – most of the time. For instance, whenever you use the “templates” feature in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) or the Maintenance Wizard, you’re using code that writes other code. There’s even ...
Corruption Recovery Tips, Database Shrinkage Advice and More
Question: My backup strategy is a daily full backup at 1 a.m. and a log backup every hour. A DBCC CHECKDB also runs every day at 4 a.m. If I get to work at 8 a.m. and discover that the nighttime consistency checks found extensive corruption, how can I recover without losing a lot of data?
Job Quality
Through a circuitous route, I encountered a meaningful, thought-provoking quote lately: "... the best way to predict the future is to...
Quick Tip Of The Day
Over and over again we are told that the DMV’s only hold data since your last reboot. So, how do...
Blogs
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...
SQL Server Security Hardening Guide Using the DoD STIG Checklist
Security on your SQL Server is important. That doesn’t need any explaining. But where...
EightKB 2026: Registration is Open!
It’s that time of year again! EightKB is back on August 20th at 13:00...
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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