Power BI Designing with Diagrams
In this article learn about how to use the new diagram view along with a schema view in Power BI to make Power Query online editing easier on report designers.
Another look at table variables
Becoming overly enthusiastic about a new SQL Server feature can backfire if you don’t do some testing. One example is the table variable introduced with SQL Server 2000. At the time, there was a myth that table variables would always perform better than temp tables with the reasoning that, by definition, variables are stored in […]
Chaos Engineering in Azure
Chaos engineering is all about breaking your application. Let us see what it is all about and how easy it is in Azure.
The Usefulness of Database Features
The features we want and get in a database platform can make our job easier or harder. Steve has a few thoughts on how they should work.
Frustrated with your database monitoring challenges?
Find out how 2500+ of your database professional peers are meeting current and upcoming challenges in our free reports. We cover the Cloud, Security, Growing Environments and the value of monitoring for the entire organization.
Sentiment Analysis with Python
Python is a modern general-purpose programming language that's very useful for analytics. Sanil Mhatre demonstrates sentiment analysis with Python.
A Real World Security Reminder
A reminder today that security in the physical world can affect the digital world.
Using Azure File and Blob Storage with Azure VMs – Step by Step
Learn how to use Azure File and Blob storage with your applications.
Getting started with MySQL
The first step when getting started with MySQL is to get it installed and running. In this article, Robert Sheldon explains how to install it on Windows and create the first database and table.
Moving from ‘Chaotic’ to ‘Managed’ Database Development using Flyway
This article describes a route to adopting Flyway in order to bring management and control to a chaotic database development process. It is based on use of Flyway migrations to update a database from version to version, while maintaining object-level source scripts for tracking changes between versions.
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