Azure Data Studio - A SandDance demo
Learn how you can get better charting in Azure Data Studio with SandDance.
Dry Runs for Database Migrations using Flyway Teams
How Dry Run scripts work, and how they can be used to deliver a single-script release artifact to Staging, verify placeholder substitutions in SQL migration scripts, and simply team code reviews.
Using SQL Server sequence objects
SQL Server sequence objects have several properties that control how they behave. Greg Larson explains the options of using SQL Server sequence objects.
Holiday Fun for Your Career
The Advent of Code is live, and Steve finds it to be a fun way to take a break during your day.
SQL Server Data Masking: a comparison with Gallium Data
Introduction In SQL Server 2016, Microsoft introduced a new feature called dynamic data masking, which allows you to mask the values of certain columns and keep that data hidden from certain users, without having to modify your applications. Let's take a look at how SQL Server does data masking, and compare it to the way Gallium Data […]
When to Use a Database
While relational developers and administrators might always want to use a database, that might not be the case for those that analyze data. Steve suggests you help them see the value of a database platform.
Top Query Search in SQL Monitor
SQL Monitor v12.0 has added a new Query Text Search feature to allow users to search the text of the most expensive queries that executed on a SQL Server instance over a period. Here's what it does, and how it works.
Trusting STRING_SPLIT() order in Azure SQL Database
Learn about the changes to the STRING_SPLIT function in Azure SQL Database that allows you to specify ordinal position of the output.
Building a Production Database
Lessons learned from building a database caught Steve's eye, and he has a few comments.
Blogs
Setting Up a Mac for Data Engineering and AI Work
If you work with data pipelines, SQL, notebooks, or machine learning models, a Mac...
Want to look at cloud reporting but not sure what the costs will be?
By ChrisJenkins
Have you been thinking about migrating your reporting to Microsoft Fabric or Snowflake but...
The Joyful Craftsmen and the Revolt BI join forces
The Joyful Craftsmen has become the new owner of Revolt BI. The merger creates...
Forums
SQL Art, Part 4: Happy 4th of July — A British DBA's Guide to Celebrating a War We Don't Talk About
Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Art, Part 4: Happy...
SQL Server Enum Implementation: A Single-Row View Strategy for Avoiding Magic Values
Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Server Enum Implementation: A...
BIT_COUNT I
Comments posted to this topic are about the item BIT_COUNT I
Question of the Day
BIT_COUNT I
In SQL Server 2025, I have a table (dbo.UserPermission) that contains this data:
UserID UserPermissions 15 23 37What is returned when I run this code:
select bit_count(UserPermissions) as PermissionCount from dbo.UserPermission where UserID = 3;See possible answers