The Journey to PostgreSQL (or anything)
Learning is fundamental in technology. Steve has a few thoughts on adopting a new technology at work.
T‑SQL BULK INSERT vs OPENROWSET: CSV Imports, File Access Gotchas, and A PowerShell Script
Most SQL bulk insert and SQL Server openrowset tutorials skip file access issues that can stop imports cold. Both the bulk insert statement and openrowset function rely on the SQL Server service account to read a source file. The SQL Server service account must have read permission on the file or its folder. It is also convenient to have read & execute as well as list folder content permissions.
No, Accelerated Database Recovery Doesn’t Fix NOLOCK.
I have never seen a T-SQL feature that people love as much as NOLOCK.
Migrate SSRS Reports to a New Server in Just a Few Clicks
Learn how to migrate SSRS reports to a new server using SSRS Reports Migration Wizard. Step-by-step guide to move reports, data sources, and datasets in just a few clicks.
The Improvement Limit
How much of a difference can you make at a job? Steve has a few thoughts today.
Schema Design Basics for Power BI
You have a Power BI project that generates real-time reports for an inventory management system that uses SQL Server. You are aware that Power BI performance is heavily influenced by how your data is structured in SQL Server but don’t have a clear understanding of how to optimize your SQL data structure for Power BI. In this article, we look at different ways to structure the data and tables to help improve Power BI query performance.
Technological Dinosaurs or Social Dinosaurs?
You're going to have to bear with me on this one because my thoughts aren't fully formed. As I'm sure I've mentioned, I'm a little elderly (and you thought I was going to talk about radios). As such, I've seen the death of a few technologies. I may not have shared this widely, but my […]
Distributed Availability Group Health: T-SQL and Zabbix
Spotting synchronization disconnects between a primary and a secondary data center in a distributed availability group configuration can be hard, so here are valuable tools to help you with it
Start Fixing Your DB with Better Code
The best way to improve your database performance is with better code. We all know that, but few of us actually end up making those changes.
Blogs
Using Prompt AI for a Travel Data Analysis
By Steve Jones
I was looking back at my year and decided to see if SQL Prompt...
FinOps for Kubernetes: Leveraging OpenCost, KubeGreen, and Kubecost for Cost Efficiency
In the era of cloud-native applications, Kubernetes has become the default standard platform for...
2025 Wrapped for Steve
By Steve Jones
I’ve often done some analysis of my year in different ways. Last year I...
Forums
The North Star for the Year
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The North Star for the...
Multiple Escape Characters
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Multiple Escape Characters
reaching ftp thru winscp but erroring in ssis ftp task connection
Hi, below i show various results trying to reach our ftp site (a globalscape...
Question of the Day
Multiple Escape Characters
In SQL Server 2025, I run this code (in a database with the appropriate collation):
SELECT UNISTR('%*3041%*308A%*304C%*3068 and good night', '%*') AS 'A Classic';
What is returned? See possible answers