A Cynic's Top Ten Tips for IT Contractors
As autumn approaches, Patrick Index produces his ten hot chestnuts for IT Contractors like himself, with a jaundiced 'contractor's-eye view'.
Free Training
I heard on Thursday a couple weeks ago that someone who had received a free admission to the PASS conference had cancelled and wasn't able to attend. It was last minute and that pretty much ruled out any chance to have a contest, so I called a friend in Denver who's a DBA and doesn't get much of a budget for training. I offered him the admission and he said he'd let me know Friday.
Replication Statement Delivery Options - Part 2
Continuing with his look at transactional replication, Andy Warren looks at the various delivery options with a detailed analysis of what happens under various configurations.
RSS Everywhere
With the new codebase in place, RSS is pervasive throughout the site. Get a few hints here on how this works.
Four cool new features slated for SQL Server 2008
SQL Server 2008 (code named Katmai) is scheduled to launch in February of next year, and the code isn't slated to be released to manufacturing until Q2 2008. But database gurus don't have to wait to get a sense of what's to come because Microsoft recently released SQL Server 2008 to the community for preview.
The Socialization of Knowledge
This article is an excerpt from the forthcoming book, Business Metadata, to be published on or about September, 2007, co-authored by Bill Inmon, Bonnie O’Neil and Lowell Fryman, published by Morgan Kaufman.
Billy-yons and Billy-yons of Records
There was an article last week with a great title: The Mother of All Genealogy Databases, and so I had to take a look at it. It talks about some of the large databases on the Internet that are collection public records and linking them together to help people find out about their individual and family histories. The largest site so far, Ancestry.com, supposedly has 5 billion records.
Replication Statement Delivery Options - Part 1
Replication is one of the more useful features in SQL Server and can handle a wide variety of tasks based on his configuration. SQL Server expert Andy Warren takes a look at some of the default transational replication options in this article and what they mean.
SQLServerCentral.com - The Missing Manual
Lots of changes to the site, see how to work with some of them.
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
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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