External Article

Keep Your Data Secure with the New Advanced Encryption Standard

The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is a National Institute of Standards and Technology specification for the encryption of electronic data. It is expected to become the accepted means of encrypting digital information, including financial, telecommunications, and government data. This article presents an overview of AES and explains the algorithms it uses. Included is a complete C# implementation and examples of encrypting .NET data. After reading this article you will be able to encrypt data using AES, test AES-based software, and use AES encryption in your systems.

SQLServerCentral Editorial

Working with PASS

I joined PASS in 1999 and attended the inaugural Summit in Chicago. It was in the lower level of a hotel just on the river, I went to the last White Sox game of the year, and got to see Kalen Delaney speak about this newly released SQL Server 7.

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An Hour in Time

Daylight Savings time switches a little later this year. In fact it's November 4th this year, after having been in October for all of my life. In case you don't remember which way we move the clocks, here's a saying: Spring forward, fall back.

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Question of the Day

Encoding Strings

I have this code in SQL Server 2025. What is the result? 

DECLARE @message VARCHAR(50) = 'Hello SQL Server 2025!';
DECLARE @encoded VARCHAR(MAX);

SET @encoded = BASE64_ENCODE(@message);
SELECT @encoded AS EncodedResult;

See possible answers