Introduction to GitHub Actions Part 1: Getting Started
This article series will teach you what you need to know to take advantage of GitHub Actions, especially for deploying database code.
Feeling your age? How would you know?
As this idea is being born, I am sitting in a dueling piano bar and I have never felt so old ever. And I don’t mean physically. I have only recognized about 1/4 of the songs being played, and everyone just seems younger than me. Even the people I think are older seem younger as […]
A Domain for Data
A SQL DDL statement that Steve never knew about is the subject of today's editorial.
Windows Clustered MSDTC and SQL Server 2019 mishap
Introduction As you may know, in the early days of SQL Server Clustering, Microsoft advised to provide each clustered SQL Server instance with its own Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator (MSDTC) resource. Since SQL Server 2012 this advice has been withdrawn. Microsoft now recommends to provide your instance with its own MSDTC resource, once you notice the […]
DAX CASE Statement Functionality using IF, SWITCH and SWITCH True
If you don’t know, DAX (Data Analysis Expressions) is a language for creating custom calculations and aggregations in Power Pivot, Power BI, and other data analysis tools. Two functions in DAX come close to replicating the functionality but come with limitations. Which one of these functions should you use?
Database DevOps Metrics
DevOps includes the idea of measuring how code flows through your organization and looking for ways to improve your software development process. Steve has a few thoughts on the four main metrics many developments use.
Scales & Measurements
If you’re going to work with databases, you probably ought to know something about data. In particular, we don’t put data directly into a database; we have to encode it and represent it in a format which a machine can handle.
DeepSeek: What is new with this AI technology?
Learn how the DeepSeek GenAI LLM works and see how it produces SQL code.
Is GenAI Coming Faster Than You Think?
GenAI technologies have created a lot of concern among many tech workers. Steve has a few thoughts on how these technologies might impact data professionals.
Finding Out What Changed in a Cumulative Update
Over the last several years, Microsoft has been putting less and less effort into Cumulative Update documentation. We used to get full-blown knowledge base articles about fixes, but these days, we get a collection of footnotes with deceiving hyperlinks that look like they’re going to lead to more information – but they simply lead back to themselves.
Blogs
Catching Up On SQLOrlando
By Andy Warren
Somehow two years have elapsed since my last update; hopefully it won’t be that...
Advice I Like: Pyramid Schemes
By Steve Jones
If someone is trying to convince you it’s not a pyramid scheme, it’s a...
Using Prompt AI for a Travel Data Analysis
By Steve Jones
I was looking back at my year and decided to see if SQL Prompt...
Forums
Switch partition: NULL boundary id
I have table: t1 in schema1 with 19 billion records. I have another table...
Minimally Viable Security
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Minimally Viable Security
Encoding NULL
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Encoding NULL
Question of the Day
Encoding NULL
What is returned from this code in SQL Server 2025?
SELECT BASE64_ENCODE(NULL)See possible answers