Blocking Private Messages
A new feature on SQLServerCentral to allow you more control over who can contact you.
Move Data from SQL Server to Azure Blob Storage with Incremental Changes – Part 1
Learn how to get started uploading data from a SQL Server to Azure Blob Storage.
Quickly Find and Mask Sensitive Data with Data Masker 6.3.1
Khie Biggs, a software developer on the Data Masker team at Redgate, explains how a recent set of Data Masker improvements should make it significantly easier and faster both to determine what data needs to be masked, and then to apply the masking, to protect sensitive and personal data in the tables and columns of your SQL Server databases.
Storage 101: Welcome to the Wonderful World of Storage
Understanding all the storage options available to...
The New Year: A Chance to Start Over
January 1st is the beginning of a new year thanks to Julius Caesar and Pope Gregory XIII. This date is somewhat arbitrary, and many religions and cultures celebrate their own beginning of a new year at different times. Even though these celebrations don’t fall at the same time, I think the sentiment is similar. The […]
OUTPUT Clause Basics (For Inserts and Deletes)
When INSERTING or DELETING rows from a table, the OUTPUT clause can be used to return a dataset containing the changes made. Mat Richardson explains how.
The Best DBA Gifts
Today Steve asks if there is anything you'd want as a gift that would make your job better.
Do You Have REFERENCES?
The logic for referential integrity can be implemented in application code, but to make sure that it is enforced, include foreign key constraints in the database design instead. In this article, Joe Celko talks about the history of references in SQL and the options available today.
A Dearth of Data
A new technique developed by Microsoft is designed to help AI/ML models get trained with minimal data.
Blogs
Identity Columns Can’t Be Updated: #SQLNewBlogger
By Steve Jones
I’m not sure I knew identity column values could not be updated. I ran...
Rolling Back a Broken Release
By Steve Jones
We had an interesting discussion about deployments in databases and how you go forward...
A bespoke reporting solution doesn’t have to cost the earth
By ChrisJenkins
You could be tolerating limited reporting because there isn’t an off the shelf solution...
Forums
Can someone please explain what happens?
I have mentioned this several times over several years. Can someone please help me...
SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT) returns null when nothing is found instead of 0
SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT Component) AS Found FROM tblComponents WHERE(Component NOT LIKE '%[a-z]%') AND(LTRIM(RTRIM(Component)) = 'GM13622')...
Remotely Engineer Fabric Lakehouse objects: The Fabric Modern Data Platform
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Remotely Engineer Fabric Lakehouse objects:...
Question of the Day
Creating JSON III
In a SQL Server 2025 table, called Beer, I have this data:
BeerIDBeerName 1Becks 2Fat Tire 3Mac n Jacks 4Alaskan Amber 8KirinI run this code:
SELECT JSON_OBJECTAGG(
BeerID: BeerName )
FROM beer;
What are the results? See possible answers