BI Has Left the Building
Smart CFOs and CIOs should consider making mobile BI available to employees as a way to improve productivity, extend BI adoption and improve operational efficiencies.
Close those Loopholes - Testing Stored Procedures
Alex and Alex continue their series of three articles on 'Unit Testing' database development work with some examples of unit testing stored procedures.
How to Choose the Best Connectors for SSIS
What types of connectors make the most sense for SSIS packages? New author Mike Frost brings us a look at the various options along with some recommendations for different types of data as well as the 64-bit platform.
Creating SQL Server Reporting Services templates
Tired of creating templates in SQL Server Reporting Services? Learn how to maintain reusable Reporting Services templates in SQL Server 2005 using BIDS.
Sync Your Database to SharePoint Using SSIS
Discover how to import and export SharePoint list items using SQL Server Integration Services and the new Collaborative Application Markup Language (CAML).
Server Side Paging With SQL Server 2005
One of the more common requests of an application working with SQL Server is to deal with pages, or sections, or data rather than an entire result set. Often an application retreives the entire result set and then only shows the user a few records, repeating the process with the next page. Regular columnist Jacob Sebastian brings us a more efficient method of implementing paging in SQL Server 2005.
Agile on a Fixed Budget
Scott examines strategies for dealing with constraints that business stakeholders may put on software development teams.
Getting Small: Building Lightweight Web Applications with Small-Footpr
Not every application needs a full-featured enterprise-scale database. In such cases, you can reduce costs and save resources by using a small-footprint database.
Enums in SQL Server
SQL Server MVP Simon Sabin brings us a very interesting article on a possibilltyfor using enumerated values instead of integer or other coded foreign keys. It is an interesting idea that could go a long way towards making code easier to read.
SqlCredit Part 7: Performance Impact of EncryptByCert and DecryptByCer
Part 7 of our "Developing a Complete SQL Server OLTP Database Project" discusses performance issues resulting from using EncryptByCert and DecryptByCert. Read the article and download the code to run the test yourself.
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