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.
SSISDB Catalog Defaults Best Practices
Introduction The SSISDB database (a.k.a. the SSISDB catalog) was introduced back in SQL Server 2012 to de-clutter the MSDB database and provide an in-house logging and reporting infrastructure. In a nutshell, SSISDB is an SSIS framework making SQL Server Integration Services more robust and enterprise-friendly by providing the following features: Database backup Database encryption Support […]
ASP.NET Core with GitOps: Deploying Infrastructure as Code
Automation of server builds minimizes human error, ensures that environments are identical, and saves time building servers. This article from Mircea Opera demonstrates provisioning one server or multiple load-balanced servers in AWS with code.
SQL Server Transparent Data Encryption vs. NetLib Encryptionizer
Between the legislation over the years (HIPAA, GLBA, GDPR, CCPA, etc.) and data breaches from large organizations that seem to pop-up in the news on a monthly basis, SQL Server database encryption is critical for our industry. SQL Server ships with a few options for a native encryption implementation (Column Level Encryption, Transparent Data Encryption, Data Masking, Always Encrypted), that all provide value in particular situations, but none of the options all seem to address all of the needs. What is the best way to encrypt our SQL Server data?
Synchronously Refreshing a Power BI Dataset using Azure Logic Apps
In this tip we will implement a polling mechanism to verify if the Power BI dataset has refreshed successfully.
Blogs
Presenting with Visual Studio Code
A while back I wrote a quick post on setting up key mappings in...
Advice I Like: In 100 Years
By Steve Jones
In 100 years a lot of what we take to be true now will...
dataMinds Saturday 2026 – Slides
At Saturday the 21st of February I’m presenting an introduction to dimensional modelling at...
Forums
AllocationType as ROW_OVERFLOW_DATA
Hello, I inherited a number of tables with like 20-30 column using nvarchar(256) in...
is it true we cant debug c# scripts in ssis anymore under vs
Hi, i'm running vs2022. I'm trying out a c# script that i'd like to...
Question of the Day
Missing the Jaro Winkler Distance
I upgraded a SQL Server 2019 instance to SQL Server 2025. I wanted to test the fuzzy string search functions. I run this code:
SELECT JARO_WINKLER_DISTANCE('tim', 'tom')
I get this error message:Msg 195, Level 15, State 10, Line 1 'JARO_WINKLER_DISTANCE' is not a recognized built-in function name.What is wrong? See possible answers