The Changing Landscape of Information Management
A high level view of how enterprises should manage their data and information.
Getting Started with Cloud-hosted Databases using Spawn
This article will get you started with Spawn, a hosted database cloning service running entirely on Amazons AWS.
How to filter DAX for paginated reports
DAX is unlike SQL when filtering. In this article, Adam Aspin demonstrates how to filter DAX for paginated reports.
Where the World Takes You
We're launching into a new year and there are lots of "looking into the future" articles out there. Personally, I'm pretty jazzed for the coming year for any number of reasons (can you say "SQL Server 2022"?). However, I also get a little retrospective at times like this. Now, I'm not going to talk about […]
Analyze Live Salesforce Data in Infragistics Reveal
Infragistics Reveal is a data visualization solution that simplifies the way you add embedded analytics and visualizations to your apps. Reveal supports connecting to OData APIs, but many enterprise APIs are not built using the OData standard. By combining Reveal with CData solutions, you can instantly build dynamic dashboards from live enterprise data sources like Salesforce. […]
Query control made easy
Overview As we all know, data security is a never-ending battle. Every day, we hear of new data breaches. It's a hard problem, and there is no single solution, other than a defense in depth. Let's look at one of those defenses for databases: query control. Query control is a simple idea: most applications access […]
What Were Your 2021 Wins
The first poll question of the year has Steve asking you to look back at 2021 and pick something good that happened.
Azure Policies and Management Groups
You can define policies for your Azure SQL Databases for security and meeting your organization’s standards. Management groups simplify policies over multiple subscriptions. Michael Wood explains Azure Policies and Management Groups.
Using Flyway Teams with SQL Change Automation PowerShell Cmdlets
Use Flyway to run your database migrations, each time automatically creating a SQL Change Automation release object to provide object-level scripts and a build script for the new version, along with change reports and code analysis reports.
Challenging Trends
Steve notes the changes in the world might affect how to view and use data in our work.
Blogs
Adding an HTTP MCP Server to VSCode
By Steve Jones
I wrote earlier this week about the SQL MCP Server using the Data API...
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...
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