What's a Good Manager
What makes a good manager? In response to a recent thread, Janet Wong takes us through some of the good and bad managers she's had during her career and talks about the problems today with technical managers.
Optimise SQL Server queries with these advanced tuning techniques
Now that you know how to speed up your SQL Server database queries, you can start delving into some of the more advanced tuning options.
SQL Server Training at TCU
If you are near Texas Christian University, you might want to check out this training from a SQL Server MVP.
Obfuscation
Test data is critical to being sure your application works, but is production data ok to use in test environments?
SQLServerCentral Rules of Conduct
Being a part of the community means that there are certain standards that we'd like you to adhere to. Steve Jones brings you a few reminders of how to behave when posting in the community.
XML Workshop XIII - XSD And Variable Content Containers
Continuing on with his highly popular XML series, Jacob Sebastian looks at variable content and stylesheets in your SQL content.
RAID Scaling Charts, Part 3: 4-128 kB Stripes Compared
This is the third article that deals with analyzing the various possibilities involving various RAID setups and differing numbers of hard drives. We used the same hard disks again here: eight Samsung HM321KJ SATA/300 drives powered all of the possible RAID 0, RAID 5 and RAID 6 setups, with from three to as many as eight hard drives configured to use stripe sizes of 4 to 128 kB.
Serve SQL Data in XML Format
Ivan Pepelnjak describes a few ways to extract data from SQL databases and serve it to an AJAX application running in a web browser.
Data Ownership
Who owns the data that we generate ourselves? It's not as easy to answer that as you think.
Login creation in SQL Server 2005 for SQL Server Authentication Mode
Its a graphical representation of login creation in SQL Server 2005 for SQL Server Authentication Mode.
Blogs
Claude finds two cryptographic weaknesses (but the sky isn’t falling)
By Brian Kelley
If you haven't seen the announcement, Anthropic was able to utilize Claude (Mythos Preview)...
Generate Embeddings in SQL with Aurora and Bedrock
Most embedding pipelines on AWS have the same shape: a job reads rows out...
Resolving SQL Server Transaction Log Issues Efficiently
By Arun Sirpal
Transaction log issues are one of the quietest ways a healthy database turns into...
Forums
Symmetric Key Encryption
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Symmetric Key Encryption
The “Successful Login” Dilemma: Why Your Login Auditing Strategy Might Be Hurting Your Server
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The “Successful Login” Dilemma: Why...
Building Your Own Software
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Building Your Own Software
Question of the Day
Symmetric Key Encryption
If I run this statement in SQL Server 2025, how is the password encrypted?
CREATE SYMMETRIC KEY MySymmetricKey WITH ALGORITHM = AES_256, KEY_SOURCE = 'My secret key source passphrase', IDENTITY_VALUE = 'My secret identity value' ENCRYPTION BY PASSWORD = 'S&perS#cretP@ssword7'; GOSee possible answers