AI Steals Joy
Are the AI tools developers use making them enjoy their jobs more or less? Steve has a few thoughts.
Parameter Sensitive Plan Optimization in SQL Server 2022
Learn about a new feature of SQL Server 2022 - Parameter Sensitive Plan Optimization(PSPO)
Configure SQL Server Alerts for Azure SQL Managed Instance
How can we setup alerts in Azure SQL MI to notify us when there are issues?
The Yutes
I recently had the opportunity to talk a little PostgreSQL with the Salt Lake City PostgreSQL Meetup group (thank you for having me by the way). Great bunch of people who were really engaged and asked a lot of questions. On the way out of the event, I was chatting with one person (who had […]
Revisiting SQL Server Window Functions- A Practical Walkthrough
A look at window functions in SQL and how they can be used to query data without the restrictions of a GROUP BY.
The Security of Old Tech
Older technology can introduce security issues, along with performance ones. Keeping your systems somewhat up to date is important for security.
How to Increase SQL Server Column Width Without IO (Input/Output) Overhead
This article dives into a fun (and interesting!) strategy for widening fixed-width columns in SQL Server, to reduce downtime, risk, and runtime at the time when a column’s data type needs to be changed.
Password Guidance
Passwords are essential and also a problem in many organizations. Guidance has changed over the years and Steve has a few thoughts on what's recommended today.
Stairway to Transaction Log Management in SQL Server, Level 9: Monitoring the Transaction Log
Our major goal in terms of log maintenance for all databases under our care is to optimize for write performance, in order to support all activities that require SQL Server to write to the log, including data modifications, data loads, index rebuilds, and so on. However, it's also important to keep an eye on possible log fragmentation, which, as described previously, can affect the performance of processes that need to read the log, such as log backups and the crash recovery process.
A Rolling Filtered Index in SQL Server
I recently resolved an issue where a query pulling data from the last 30 days would time out due to the table’s size and the lack of a supporting index. Creating a supporting index is possible, but not ideal; it will be very large and may not be useful for most queries and use cases. I wonder how I could implement a filtered index that follows time and is always limited to the last n days.
Blogs
Shifting Mindsets: Why FinOps is Essential for Cloud Efficiency
By HeyMo0sh
As a DevOps practitioner, I’ve always focused on performance, scalability, and automation. But as...
March 2026 SQL Server Security Updates
By Brian Kelley
On Patch Tuesday, in addition to OS and Office security patches, Microsoft also released...
How Fabric Mirroring Transformed with SQL Server 2025
When mirroring was first released for Azure SQL Database, it used Change Data Capture...
Forums
Multiple Deployment Processes
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Multiple Deployment Processes
How to Use sqlpackage to Detect Schema Drift Between Azure SQL Databases
Comments posted to this topic are about the item How to Use sqlpackage to...
Upgrading Admin Queries
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Upgrading Admin Queries
Question of the Day
Upgrading Admin Queries
I have a query from a former DBA that we run on SQL Server 2025 to check on database metadata. This query references sys.sysaltfiles. I want to refactor this code to be more modern. Which DMV should I reference instead?
See possible answers