Securely Manage Database Credentials Using Visual Studio Manage User Secrets
In this tip we cover how to manage application secrets in a development environment to securely store database credentials.
Build the VCS Habit
Steve thinks version control is a fundamental and critical part of working in technology.
Fetch Web Data in Power BI
Introduction Reporting on web data has been a fascinating part of developing any dashboard or reports in Power BI. Often this data is available either free that can be consumed anonymously or by using some kind of authentication mechanism. In this article, I'm going to demonstrate how to connect to a web application from Power […]
Translating a SQL Server Schema into a Cassandra Table: Part II Integrity Constraints
Complex integrity constraints are more challenging to enforce in Cassandra than they are in a relational database. In this article, Shel Burkow walks through four modelling examples in Cassandra involving constraints.
What’s in that database? Getting information about routines
There is a lot of information held in SQL Server metadata about your SQL Server procedures, triggers, views and functions. Some of it is valuable, other nuggets are useful and a few are rather dull but worthy. It really all needs to be tied together to tell the full story, especially if you are not able to, or do not want to, query the metadata directly.
Combining many crossing intervals
This article demonstrates how the geometric functions in SQL can be use to solve the Islands and Gaps problem.
The WFH Challenges
Working from home can be hard and Steve has a few ideas that might help you transition during these challenging times.
Moving on from Volunteer Projects
I can’t remember a time when I was not involved in side-projects, usually as a volunteer but also writing books or creating courses. New projects are like bright, shiny objects, and it’s easy to get involved in too many of them.
Overview of Azure Cache for Redis
Caching data is one way to improve application performance. In this article, Chandra Kudumla explains a service for caching data found in Azure called Azure Cache for Redis.
Secure Enclave Concerns
A new security flaw in Intel SGX is found by researchers. This may or may not be a problem, but you should be aware.
Blogs
SQL Saturday Boston Slides and Code
By Steve Jones
Thanks to everyone who attended my sessions today at SQL Saturday Boston 2025. I’ve...
Scaling SQL Server 2025 Vector Search with Load-Balanced Ollama Embeddings
SQL Server 2025 introduces native support for vector data types and external AI models....
Advice I Like: Fear and Imagination
By Steve Jones
Fear is fueled by a lack of imagination. The antidote to fear is not...
Forums
How to use data pre-computed in previous ETL SSIS Nodes?
I'm building ETL packages in SSIS. My data comes from an OLE DB Source...
Building AI Governance and Policies- First Steps
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Building AI Governance and Policies-...
Simple delete causes table scan on other tables with foreign key
Why is sql doing a full scan VS seeking on the index? I've included...
Question of the Day
Checking Identities
The DBCC CHECKIDENT command is used when working with identity values. I have a table with 10 rows in it that looks like this:
TravelLogID CityID StartDate EndDate 1 1 2025-01-11 2025-01-16 2 2 2025-01-11 2025-01-16 3 3 2025-01-11 2025-01-16 4 4 2025-01-11 2025-01-16 5 5 2025-01-11 2025-01-16 6 6 2025-01-11 2025-01-16 7 7 2025-01-11 2025-01-16 8 8 2025-01-11 2025-01-16 9 9 2025-01-11 2025-01-16 10 10 2025-01-11 2025-01-16The docs for DBCC CHECKIDENT say this if I run with only the table parameter: "If the current identity value for a table is less than the maximum identity value stored in the identity column, it is reset using the maximum value in the identity column. " I run this code:
DELETE dbo.TravelLog WHERE TravelLogID >= 9
GO
DBCC CHECKIDENT(TravelLog, RESEED)
GO
INSERT dbo.TravelLog
(
CityID,
StartDate,
EndDate
)
VALUES
(4, '2025-09-14', '2025-09-17')
GO
What is the identity value for the new row inserted by the insert statement above? See possible answers