SQLServerCentral Editorial

A Matter of Degree

So we had an interesting debate on college degrees and how much weight to give them in an interview recently. Near the end someone mentioned they were curious what types of degrees people had as well as those the worked with. There were some interesting comments, and I decided that this might make a nice Friday poll.

SQLServerCentral Article

Designing Cross Database Queries

As systems get bigger, servers consolidated, and SQL Server back ends more types of applications, the need for cross database queries for reports, updates, and more will continue to grow. Steve Jones looks at a few ways that you can design your linkages and talks about why he prefers one over the other.

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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Question of the Day

An Unusual Identity

What values are returned when I run this code?

CREATE TABLE dbo.IdentityTest2
(
     id NUMERIC(10,0) IDENTITY(10,10) PRIMARY KEY,
     somevalue VARCHAR(20)
)
GO
INSERT dbo.IdentityTest2
(
    somevalue
)
VALUES
( 'Steve')
, ('Bill')
GO
SELECT top 10
 id
 FROM dbo.IdentityTest2

See possible answers