The Panjandrum Conundrum
With progress thwarted by a committee of panjandrums, will T-SQL forever remain in the doldrums? So wonders Phil Factor.
Storage 101: Understanding the Hard-Disk Drive
In this article in the series, Robert Sheldon provides a deep dive into HDDs.
Why you Should Always Specify Whether a Column Accepts Nulls
Phil Factor explains the factors that determine whether a column will allow null values, if you don't specify it explicitly in the column definition. If you rely on the default behavior established by your connection settings, you could be in for some nasty surprises.
Displaying Hierarchical Data
Producing hierarchies from SQL tables can necessitate joining a table to itself. This article will explain how you can do this.
The Developer Arguments for Stored Procedures
Today Steve asks what reasons a developer has for using stored procedures.
Creating Time-Intelligence Functions in DAX
DAX contains a host of time-intelligence functions with exotic names such as SAMEPERIODLASTYEAR and PARALLELPERIOD. In the last article in this series, Andy Brown explains how to write measures using the range of date functions in DAX, and also explains how time-intelligence functions work behind the scenes.
Meeting your CCPA needs with Data Classification and Masking
This article will explain how to import the data classification metadata for a SQL Server database into Data Masker, providing a masking plan that you can use to ensure the protection of all this data. By applying the data masking operation as part of an automated database provisioning process, you make it fast, repeatable and auditable.
Implementing Date Calculations in SQL
This article explains a way to use labels (last year, YTD, etc.) for report parameters.
Is 100% Security Possible?
A security breach at Microsoft is disconcerting, especially when they don't share details.
Build your DevOps business case with industry insights
With over 2000 participants from every industry sector across the globe, the State of Database DevOps report will help shape the business case of any team looking to implement or improve their approach to database DevOps, no matter the platform they choose to work with. Including a foreword from Kellyn Pot’Vin-Gorman, Customer Success Engineer at Microsoft, discover the landscape of database DevOps for 2020.
Blogs
Programmatic Tool Calling with the Claude SDK
Programmatic Tool Calling with the Claude SDK Every morning somebody on the team runs the...
A New Word: Mauerbauertraurigkeit
By Steve Jones
mauerbauertraurigkeit – n. inexplicable urge to push people away, even close friends whose company...
Methodology for dealing with bad data in production
By Brian Kelley
Pinal Dave wrote up his methodology for what to do when you discover bad...
Forums
Why SQL Server Database Attach fails and how to repair it
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Why SQL Server Database Attach...
Fixing P1 Queries
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Fixing P1 Queries
Question of the Day
BIT_COUNT() IV
In SQL Server 2025, I run this code:
select bit_count('A')
What is returned? See possible answers