SQL Server security – Providing a security model using user-defined roles
Greg Larsen continues his series and shows how user-defined roles roles can control SQL Server security.
Should You Learn R or Python?
Both Python and R have become very popular languages in the last few years, especially among data professionals. Which should you learn or use? Steve has a few thoughts.
SQL Server 2016 - Always Encrypted
Always Encrypted is a new security feature which was introduced in SQL Server 2016. Always Encrypted is a technology to ensure the data stored in a database remains encrypted at all times during SQL Server query processing. Always Encrypted allows clients to encrypt sensitive data, such as credit card numbers and national identification numbers, inside the […]
Creating Idempotent DDL Scripts for Database Migrations
How to write idempotent DDL scripts that Flyway can run several times on a database, such as after a hotfix has already been applied directly to the production database, without causing errors.
SQL Server plan cache mining – Plan attributes
Edward Pollack demonstrates how SQL Server plan cache mining can uncover a wealth of information to help with troubleshooting performance issues.
Hidden Pitfalls with INNER JOIN and NOT IN Operators
I want to show you how two common operators can deceive you into believing you have constructed a proper SQL statement for your solution. We may want to filter results in a table by using using a IN/NOT IN or a INNER JOIN/LEFT JOIN to another table. There are a couple of hidden dangers here […]
How to choose between SQL and NoSQL databases
Organizations have many choices when it comes to databases. In this article, Robert Sheldon explains how to choose between SQL and NoSQL databases.
Measuring Team Performance: Calculate LeadTime metric using JIRA and GitHub data
In this article we look at how to measure lead time for development projects using Python along with GitHub and JIRA.
Blogs
Who Are You Doing It For?
By Brian Kelley
But as I've matured over the years, I came to realize that I needed...
Presenting Twice in May 2026
By alevyinroc
I will be presenting my latest session, Documenting Your Work for Worry-Free Vacations, in-person...
Finding the Next Sequence Value: #SQLNewBlogger
By Steve Jones
I saw a question asking about the next sequence value and decided to try...
Forums
DB Design Methods
I've read a few posts regarding what we use to design DB models and...
Auto Update Statistics not triggering on filtered indexes
I've got a table with 186,703,969 rows, about 300GB of data. There are several...
What is the difference between SQL Server and SQL Database?
I created a SQL Database in Azure Portal but I've just noticed it also...
Question of the Day
An Unusual Identity
What values are returned when I run this code?
CREATE TABLE dbo.IdentityTest2
(
id NUMERIC(10,0) IDENTITY(10,10) PRIMARY KEY,
somevalue VARCHAR(20)
)
GO
INSERT dbo.IdentityTest2
(
somevalue
)
VALUES
( 'Steve')
, ('Bill')
GO
SELECT top 10
id
FROM dbo.IdentityTest2 See possible answers