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.
Approaches to Import JSON in SSIS (SQL Server 2016+) Part 1
In this article, 1st of 2-part series, we will look at 2 approaches to import JSON in SSIS using 2 methods: the new functionality of SQL Server 2016 and the Json.NET library.
Updating Certifications
Microsoft is retiring some certifications and offering others. Steve has a few thoughts on this.
Free Fundamentals of Index Tuning Week: Part 2, Indexing for ORDER BY
I’m teaching my Mastering Index Tuning pre-con at SQLBits and SQL Saturday Iceland, and part of the prerequisites is that you’re already familiar with my How to Think Like the Engine class and my Fundamentals of Index Tuning class. To make that easier, I’m running the Fundamentals of Index Tuning class this week on the blog.
Using the RANKX function in Power BI
Introduction In this article, I'll explain the use of the RANKX function available in DAX. The RANKX is a sortation function which is capable of performing a quite complex sorting and ranking based on the groups and values available in the dataset. It returns the ranking of a particular number available in each row of […]
Enterprise Insights from the 2020 State of Database DevOps report
17% of Enterprise respondents in this year's State of Database DevOps survey reported that DevOps has been adopted across all projects in their organization. This year’s State of Database DevOps report gave us some great insights into the landscape of Database DevOps. Kendra Little walks us through those insights specific to Enterprise organizations.
Free Fundamentals of Index Tuning Week: Part 1, Indexing for the WHERE Clause
I’m teaching my Mastering Index Tuning pre-con at SQLBits and SQL Saturday Iceland, and part of the prerequisites is that you’re already familiar with my How to Think Like the Engine class and my Fundamentals of Index Tuning class.
Blogs
PlanTrace: Stop Reading Redshift EXPLAIN Plans. Start Seeing Them
PlanTrace: Stop Reading Redshift EXPLAIN Plans. Start Seeing Them Introducing PlanTrace — a free, browser-based...
A Cloud Dependency Failure from Amazon
By Steve Jones
I went to sleep while reading a Kindle book on my phone. I know...
Deploying AI in logistics (the unfiltered version)
A conversation with Jan Laš, CIO at HOPI, about what deploying a data agent...
Forums
SPAM Issues May 2026
We suffered a SPAM attack from May 1-6, which unfortunately corresponded with time off...
SQL Password enforcing
Hi to all We have situation at a client where someone is illegally changing...
SQL Password enforcing
Hi to all We have situation at a client where someone is illegally changing...
Question of the Day
Creating a JSON Document III
I have this data in a table called dbo.NFLTeams
TeamID TeamName City YearEstablished ------ -------- ---- --------------- 1 Cowboys Dallas 1960 2 Eagles Philadelphia 1933 3 Packers Green Bay 1919 4 Chiefs Kansas City 1960 5 49ers San Francisco 1946 6 Broncos Denver 1960 7 Seahawks Seattle 1976 8 Patriots New England 1960If I run this code, how many rows are returned?
SELECT TOP 2
json_objectagg('Team' : TeamName)
FROM dbo.NFLTeams;
See possible answers