Seamless Upgrade
One of the things mentioned in a keynote at the recent PASS conference was the idea that SQL Server 2008 would be a seamless upgrade. Or maybe I misunderstood and it will seem less like an upgrade 🙂
SQL Server and SOX
The Sarbanes-Oxley act has changed many IT jobs, usually requiring more work and documentation. Johan Bijnens brings us a list of some things his team has had to do to comply with SOX regulations.
BULK recovery mode and DBCC DBREINDEX
Will changing to bulk recovery mode before running DBCC REINDEX help you avoid large log files? András investigates
Data Warehouse Quality Assurance Best Practices
Collaboration between IT and the business will help identify the reasonable issues versus the issues that cannot be resolved for the current release of the data warehouse.
Compliance
The Sarbanes-Oxley act has become a four letter word to many IT people in the US. Thankfully I only had to deal with it for about 9 months before I left to go work on my own, but it was a long 9 months. Especially since I did half the work with JD Edwards and then did it again with Peoplesoft 🙁
Working Your SOX Off
The Sarbanes-Oxley act has drastically changed the jobs of many DBAs with the audit and reporting requirements this act entails. Brandie Tarvin brings us some hints about how you can go about complying with the new requirements.
SqlCredit – Part 9: Message Authentication Codes
This month's installment of "Developing a Complete SQL Server OLTP Database Project" covers searching encrypted data, dictionary attacks, and look-ups by hashed value.
The Puzzle of 'Rating Decomposition'
When reading rating information, how do you you knew how many points each separate voter gave if you only know the average rating and the number of votes? Well, you might be surprised to learn that you can figure it out using SQL
Conditional Statements in WHERE Clauses
T-SQL is a powerful language, enabling you to handle many different types of set based operations. But having flexible WHERE clauses isn't something that many DBAs deal with on a daily basis. New Author Sotiris Filippidis brings us an article on how you can structure a WHERE clause to handle all types of strange business logic without using dynamic SQL. Read on to learn more about his technique.
Blogs
Microsoft announces new cybersecurity AI multi-model
By Brian Kelley
Yesterday, July 27, 2026, Microsoft announced a new cybersecurity effort called Project Perception. Included...
Getting the SQL Server MCP Server Running
By Steve Jones
If you’ve wanted a SQL Server MCP server for your databases, it’s available. The...
Introducing azsql-migration-test: Test and Validate Azure SQL Database Migrations
Introducing azsql-migration-test, a small open-source CLI that validates your Azure SQL Database migrations against...
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