Verifying Object Exists and Dropping Object with One Statement
For years you probably have been writing code similar to the code below to verify an object exist prior to dropping it.
SQL Is Always Going to be Popular
Steve thinks that learning more about the SQL language is always a good career investment.
SQL Server Extended Properties: Stairway to Exploring Database Metadata Level 7
In this level, I’ll introduce Extended Properties. As with the previous levels, I want to illustrate as much as possible with practical and immediately useful code.
Never Create Columns with ANSI_PADDING set to OFF
There is no good reason for having ANSI_PADDING set to OFF when you create tables in SQL Server. It was provided purely for legacy databases that had code that assumed the old CHAR behavior for dealing with padding, and its use has now been deprecated.
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.
Blogs
ISACA AI Material/Exam Prep Discount (May 18 – June 30, 2026)
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A Fabric solution can be very cost effective
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Track SQL Server Configuration Changes Using the Error Log
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Track SQL Server Configuration Changes Using the Error Log If you...
Forums
Before Using AI with Business Data, Read This
Artificial intelligence tools are quickly becoming part of daily business operations, from document analysis...
Designing SQL Server ETL Pipelines That Don't Break at Scale
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Designing SQL Server ETL Pipelines...
Detecting Deadlocks Quickly
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Detecting Deadlocks Quickly
Question of the Day
Detecting Deadlocks Quickly
In the Database Engine, when a deadlock is detected, what does the detection interval shrink to (in time)?
See possible answers